Out of the Sun (13 page)

"When did you join them?"

"Two years ago. When Project Sybil was set up. David recommended me. Ostensibly because of my expertise in technological applications of quantum effects. Actually so we could work closer together on higher dimensions."

"Dr. Tilson said the purpose of the project was to predict in detail the state of the world in 2050."

"Correct. On behalf of a consortium of international corporations Lazenby never identified. Confidentiality is another of his watchwords. Secrecy is what it feels like. We were forbidden to discuss the project, even with other Globescope staff. The money was good, of course. The money was enough to buy a lot of silence. Particularly in the light of Lazenby's reputation as a litigator. He had us tied up with all sorts of contracts. And he was prepared to enforce them."

"You didn't have to sign."

"No. But we did sign. For the money, the prestige and the job itself. It was a genuinely exciting opportunity."

"How many of you were there?"

"Seven. David and I. Gerard Mermillod and Marvin Kersey. Donna Trangam. Makepeace Steiner. Rawnsley Ablett. It was an impressive line-up. A mathematician; a physicist; a sociologist; a biochemist; a neuroscientist; a computer scientist; and an economist. With two years and Globescope's facilities at our disposal, we aimed to form a clear and specific picture of the middle of the next century. How it would be. What it would feel like. What sort of lives we'd all be leading. How the world and the human race would be faring. You have to understand. This was no rush-job. No superficial sketch of the future. This was weighed and analysed reality. As close to the truth as you could come, with allowances for all the variables. This was as accurate as prediction ever gets."

"And how will it be in 2050?"

"You won't hear that from me. You'd gain nothing from knowing what we predicted. You'll be long dead by then. So will I. It's a burden you don't need to carry, believe me. And it's not the point. It's not really why we're here."

"Why are we, then?"

"Because last spring the seven of us presented our preliminary conclusions to Lazenby. And he didn't like them. He said they were incompatible with Globescope policy and weren't what his clients required. He didn't dispute their accuracy. He didn't bother to. He simply told us to change them. To make them .. . commercially acceptable."

"But if you changed them, they wouldn't be '

"Right? Exactly. We realized then, as we should have sooner, that Lazenby's guiding principle the key to his success was to tell clients what they wanted to hear, not what they needed to know. Neither he nor his clients were going to be around to argue the point in 2050. What they were paying for was reassurance for their shareholders. Proof that they were looking to the future in a responsible manner. Lazenby never identified the corporations involved, but we knew they had to be big multinationals with interests in all the global staples. Oil. Automobiles. Chemicals. Arms. Aerospace. Pharmaceuticals. Whatever it was, our predictions were clear. None of that kind of business would be going on in the same way in 2050. The world wouldn't be recognizable to the corporate kings of today or suited to their survival. It's not nice to be told your days are numbered. It's not popular. And Lazenby decided it wasn't profitable either. So, he instructed us to ... adjust our parameters, as he put it... in order to produce a more palatable result. We refused. Seven high-minded scientists took an ethical stand. We weren't going to be pushed around. Instead, we were pushed out. Dismissed on the spot. Told to be off the premises within half an hour. Watched throughout that time to ensure we took nothing with us. And forcefully reminded that discussion of any aspect of Project Sybil with a third party would constitute breach of contract. We could crawl back to the comfortable academic institutions we'd come from and keep our mouths shut. Or we could shoot them off and get taken to court."

"Surely the project generated records? If not on paper, then on computer. Couldn't you have used them to defend any court action?"

"Shredded and/or wiped. Probably the day we left. Makepeace hacked into the Globescope system later and confirmed our files had been deleted. Eighteen months' unique analysis of the future had been flushed down the toilet."

"What did you do?"

"At first, nothing. We were all a bit shell-shocked, I think. I went back to Princeton. The others dispersed too. Gerard returned to IHES, Marvin to McGill, Rawnsley to Harvard, Makepeace to Caltech and Donna to Berkeley. Only David stayed in Washington. In his little house in Georgetown, within walking distance of Globescope. He wasn't in any hurry to leave."

"What about him and Donna? His mother seems to think .. ."

"Yes, they had a thing going. They lived together for a while. But that ended about the same time. What can I tell you? Donna went back to California and David didn't follow her. Neither of them wanted to talk about it. But they were civil to each other when we all met up last summer in Florida. The gathering was Donna's idea. She wanted to know how many of us felt the same as her. That we should do something to publicize our findings and expose Globescope as a corrupt organization. Well, we all went along with that. Our predictions for 2050 were truly frightening. But they weren't inevitable. Our whole point was that concerted action now could improve the picture immeasurably. But we no longer had enough detailed facts and figures to back up our claims. Lazenby had destroyed them. So, what could we do? Donna's answer was typical of her. She can be a terrier when she wants to be. Her proposal was that we each reassemble our own contribution to the project from scratch. It wasn't as bad as it sounds. We knew where to find the information. But it meant a lot of hard painstaking work, at evenings and weekends, for no immediate reward. Nevertheless, we all agreed. It was worth it, after all. We were talking about the kind of world our grandchildren might grow up in. We were unanimous. We reckoned it would take six months to put Project Sybil back together. Then we could offer it and the whole story to the scientific press. Until then, we had to work and communicate in secret. It was vital Lazenby shouldn't learn what we were planning."

"But he did?"

"Oh yes. He learnt about it."

Christiansborg was still on their left, but the wind that had been at their backs was blowing in their faces now. They had circled the castle and were heading towards the harbour, the rain dying as the wind rose, star-pricked windows opening in the churning sky.

"A couple of weeks after I got back from Florida, David came to see me. He was in one of his elated moods, when he could make you believe nothing was beyond him. He had an idea. A good one, he persuaded me. We could go to Lazenby and make a deal with him. We could offer to break ranks with the others and publicly contradict them. Dispute their predictions and say Globescope had behaved impeccably throughout. That would effectively kill the story. In exchange, we would require Lazenby to finance the establishment of HYDRA. It would cost him several million dollars, but that would be a fair price to pay for preserving Globescope's reputation." Hammelgaard glanced round at Harry. "Perhaps you think I should have turned him down there and then. But there was our dream, you see. A dream suddenly made attainable. With an elegant justification built in. Access to hyper-dimensional powers might help to solve many of the problems that Project Sybil had shown the future held. Whereas the reaction to the Globescope story when it broke might be just as ineffectual as all those other high-sounding appeals to safeguard the planet. Remember the Earth Summit? Long-term achievements nil. What made David's idea so hard to resist was that it made sense. We could waste our lives applying for funds to this worthy body and that. There would never be enough to set up an institution that would actually work, actually succeed. Whereas, with the kind of money Lazenby could tap into .. . We'd be doing our friends a favour, David argued. In the end, they'd thank us. Around the same time as we won the Nobel Prize for Physics."

They reached the harbour side road and turned left, still following the floodlit ramparts of Christiansborg. For a minute or so, neither of them spoke. Harry felt sick and fuddled, sated with knowledge, much of which he would have preferred not to possess. A peril-strewn future. And friendship betrayed by his own son. For the sake of half a chance, maybe less, of discovering something Harry had not the slightest hope of ever understanding. Yet something took the edge off his gloom, something he could never have brought himself to admit. The score was closer between him and David now. Condemnation and forgiveness were owed on both sides.

"We should have told the others. We should have consulted them first. It would have worked equally well as a put-up job. But we were afraid they'd veto the idea. Donna disagreed strongly with David's theories about hyper-dimensional capability in the brain. And none of the others really understood them. It was too risky to seek their agreement. We decided to keep them in the dark."

"You went to Lazenby together?"

"Yes. At the end of August."

"What did he say?"

"He agreed to our terms. There was a lot of bluff and bluster, but eventually he caved in. Or so we thought. It's obvious to me now he was just buying time. He wasn't prepared to be blackmailed. Or to risk exposure. He decided to apply the ultimate sanction. To pick us off one by one. That has to be it. There's no other possible explanation. I don't know how they arranged David's overdose. The circumstances sounded entirely accidental. I certainly believed it was an accident. But when Gerard died, then Marvin, I realized what was happening. We were being eliminated. The threat we posed was being neutralized. The others thought the same. I flew to New York with Donna. We met with Rawnsley and Makepeace at a hotel near the airport and agreed we'd have to go into hiding until we could finish our work on Sybil Two. Without David, Gerard and Marvin, it could never be as wide-ranging as before, but there was nothing else we could do. Accusing Lazenby of commissioning murders would get us nowhere if we couldn't put forward a plausible motive."

"But you didn't stay with them?"

"No. I said I'd prefer to work alone. I said they'd find it easier to hide without a Dane for company. But that was just an excuse. I sound as American as the next guy on the subway. I couldn't have stuck with them, though. Not knowing all the time that I was partly responsible for the situation we were in. I had to get away. To think the problem through. To find a solution."

"And have you found one?"

"Maybe. As I see it, our only hope is to strike back. To cut the ground from under Lazenby's feet."

"How?"

That's where the message comes in, Harry. The one you've agreed to carry."

"You'd better tell me what it is."

"If it works, you won't just be repairing the damage David caused. You'll be avenging what was done to him. You realize that, don't you?"

"I've said I'll do it."

"All right. But remember. It's dangerous. The insulin overdose. The Metro accident. The faulty heating system. Whoever set those up is patient and resourceful. I have no way of anticipating what they may try next. Nothing's happened in over a month. They're waiting for us to show ourselves."

"But you won't be showing yourself. I will."

"You're wrong. We have to distract their attention to give you a reasonable chance of success. As soon as you're on your way, I shall contact Lazenby and tell him I want to speak to him. Here. In Copenhagen."

"You expect him to agree?"

"No. I expect him to send his people after me. While they're chasing me round this city I know so much better than they do, you'll be delivering a message to my friends. Unobserved." He chuckled. "With any luck."

They had left Christiansborg behind now and were about to pass under one of the bridges spanning the harbour. Hammelgaard nodded at the steps leading up onto the bridge and turned towards them. "What if they get to you before your friends get to them?" asked Harry.

"Then it's god That, K0benhavn. This really is the only way out, Harry. I've spent the past month trying to think of an easy answer. There isn't one." They reached the bridge and started across it, the wind tugging at Harry's hair and sloshing the water at the piers beneath them. "This is Knippelsbro. The other side is Christianshavn. We part here. Come back this time tomorrow -one a.m. and wait at the top of the steps. I'll tell you then what arrangements I've made to get you to the States. If I reckon it's too risky to come myself, I'll send a friend. Olaf Jensen. Tall and thin as a lamppost, with a ginger beard. Difficult to miss. You can trust him."

They came to the middle of the bridge and stopped. Hammelgaard leant against the railings and gazed down into the harbour. He stayed like that for several seconds, saying nothing. Then Harry broke the silence. "What's the message, Torben?"

"Sorry. You're right. We mustn't waste time. Tell Donna and the others everything I've told you. Then add this. When David and I went to see Lazenby, I was wired. A state of the art high-resolution micro-recorder. We wanted evidence of whatever Lazenby agreed to, you see. And we got it. But Lazenby's always more suspicious than you reckon possible. He insisted we be searched before leaving. I knew they'd find the tape, of course. So, while we were waiting for Fredericks, the head of security, I disconnected the recorder, slipped it out of my pocket and stuffed it down the side of the chair. They'll remember those huge squashy armchairs in Lazenby's office. It was the one nearest the window. Down by the right arm. The recorder's no bigger than a box of matches. It was safe there. I hoped to be able to retrieve it later. The microphone was inside a pen, which on its own didn't arouse any suspicion. But we were shown the door straight after Fredericks had frisked us, so I had to leave the recorder where it was. There should be enough on the tape to make some kind of case against Lazenby. Even if it doesn't stand up in court, it'll ruin him. And that's the only way to stop him now."

That's it?"

"Yes. I don't know how they can lay their hands on the cassette, but they have to. It's '