Shift (31 page)

"Come on, Nick, what have we got to lose?"

"I don't know—everything, nothing. There's nothing more we can tell anyone. Our new friend here might be some kind of plant to trick us. We could jeopardise the trial if we're not careful."

"What trial is this that you speak of?"

"We were told that we were suspected of murdering one of your colony. Isn't that right?"

"It is correct but there will be no trial. This is not the Earth of your . . . memories. A consensus for your guilt already exists. Did you not realise this? It is only a few individuals like myself who have prevented your disassembling. I am only here now because there are certain things that I need to know for myself. For the good of the colony, in the long run, whether they know it or not."

Disassembling . . . no trial . . . guilty. Words rained like poison arrows, but could they believe a word their new interlocutor said?

"You'll help us escape if we tell you all you want to know?" she asked.

The boy smiled, a strange other-worldly smile. "I will," he said, his lips not moving.

"Well, what do you want to know?"

"First I will put this affair in context. I note from images of previous meetings that you made a request to know what it was we were looking for in order to aid us in our search. I think that has merit. Consensus disagreed—believing the less you knew the less tainted your answers would be—but consensus is not always right. It is a gamble, but perhaps the time for gambling is now upon us. The person you are accused of murdering was a friend of mine."

A warning light flashed inside Nick's head. They were being offered help by a friend of the victim?

"It was a close friend and colleague with, what you would call, an intuitive genius for its vocation."

"What vocation?" asked Nick.

"Xenobiology. It had an unequalled ability to understand—some would say empathise—with other species, particularly the more advanced corporeals."

Nick had a nasty feeling where this was going.

"Its work was groundbreaking," continued the boy, "but not without its critics."

"He had enemies?" asked Louise.

"It had detractors who thought its work violated the canon of separation that has protected our species since the beginning of the Isolation. They believe we should observe but not interact with other species."

"Where does torture fit in with non-interaction?" asked Louise.

"Your . . . detention is an extraordinary event. We . . . we are not used to having one of our number killed and, maybe, we have not handled this situation well. But we have little expertise in this matter. Crime is unknown to us and . . . we are learning."

"Go on," said Nick. "Your friend liked to interact with other species?"

"Indeed," said the boy, nodding his head slightly. "It would immerse itself in other cultures—maintaining that to truly comprehend another species one had to become one of them."

"It could do that?" asked Nick. "It could take on their shape and pass itself off as one of them?"

"It . . . it did not take on their shape as such. It . . . connected with them, the same way that you claim to have been connected to a corporeal entity."

"What happened to the host during all this?" asked Louise.

"The host was unharmed. My friend was acting as observer only. Albeit from inside the host's head but that was all. The host never lost free will or even knew that my friend was there."

"He didn't try and influence the host in any way?" asked Nick.

"We . . . we believe not. You must understand that my friend was a scientist. Its only motivation was to learn and it proved the efficacy of its techniques. We learned far more from its work than we'd ever learned from passive observance—even memory probing. It was—as you would say—the difference between watching a holovid of a zebra and being that zebra, tasting the grass, smelling the air."

Nick could imagine—as he could also imagine the temptation to switch from co-pilot to pilot. And this was an alien that specialised in advanced corporeals not zebras.

"So," said Nick. "What was he doing in our sector?"

"That," said the boy. "Is where things become confusing. My friend had been banished to a remote sensing station—it is easier to condone the flouting of rules if one does not have to witness their flouting . . ."

"Yes," said Nick, trying to hurry him along. "And then . . ."

"And then there is a gap. My friend suddenly left the research station and was next seen—dead—close to where you were found."

"What was the cause of death?" asked Nick.

"We do not know."

"But you must have some idea. Forensic evidence, an autopsy, something?"

"There . . . was no body—as such—we found a memory cloud, which is not unusual in such cases. Memories are difficult to destroy and often remain long after everything else has perished."

"Hang on," said Louise. "If you've got his memories, haven't you got the memory of his death as well?"

"There . . . there was no warning of death. When it came it must have been sudden and unexpected, destroying it unawares, for there are no recollections of danger."

"But it must show something," said Nick. "The reason for him leaving the station, if nothing else."

"It . . . is difficult." There was a catch in the boy's voice. And hesitance, maybe even embarrassment. He lowered his head for a second. "There . . . there are confusions."

"What kind of confusions?"

"You must understand, my friend had been . . . unwell. The prolonged physical connection to so many alien beings had . . . affected its mental well-being. We didn't realise the extent. My friend had always been . . . different. Many remarked that if there were two ways to solve a problem my friend would delight in finding a third. And the path to its solution would be bizarre, controversial and brilliant."

The alien accompanied the final sentence with a sweep of his arms, revealing long loose sleeves that trailed and frayed in the spectral wind.

"But the memory patterns we found in the cloud," he continued. "Were . . . difficult to follow—especially towards the end. There are sequences that make no sense at all."

"Could he have become ill?" suggested Nick. "And died as a result?"

"Disease is a corporeal affliction. We do not experience it."

"Could he have committed suicide?" asked Louise.

"Impossible, my friend's final memories are dominated by intense feelings of elation."

"So what makes everyone so sure he was murdered?" asked Nick.

"Because there is no other explanation. It is the equivalent of you discovering the body of a young, healthy, well-fed man in the middle of a flat, lifeless desert."

And then finding two strangers wandering close to the crime scene. Nick joined up the dots—guilt by association and lazy logic. Why look any further? The strangers done it. The cry of lynch mobs throughout the ages.

"Have you discovered what it was that drew your friend away from his research station?" asked Nick.

"No . . . the station memory was erased."

"By whom?"

"There . . . there is evidence to suggest that my friend erased the entries."

"Why would he do that?" asked Nick.

There was a prolonged pause. Embarrassment? The boy's voice betrayed his reticence.

"There is some evidence of paranoia. But my friend had been banished; it was justified in its suspicion of Council interference . . ." The boy's voice trailed off.

"Would the Council have had him killed?" asked Louise.

"No!" The first hint of anger from the colonist. His image flared for an instant, blurring into the dazzling white of his surroundings. "The idea is unthinkable. My friend was held in the highest esteem even amongst the severest of its critics."

"Back to your friend's reason for leaving the research station," said Nick. "Have you determined how long ago that was?"

The boy bristled. "I begin to doubt the wisdom of this interview. All you have done is ask questions and attempt to pass the guilt onto others. This is not what I had envisioned."

He began to turn, floating rather than using his legs.

"We apologise," said Nick. "But I believe it possible that your friend visited our planet and, if so, I think it vital to find out why and when."

The boy turned back. "We found no evidence of that in your memories."

This was becoming hard going. The colonist had a very rigid way of looking at things. "That's because the possibility has only just occurred to us," said Nick. "Now, if you tell me when your friend left the research station maybe I can link that to an event on Earth that might have triggered it."

"Your non-existent planet Earth?"

Lucky Louise was restrained, thought Nick. This would be about the time she looked around for the nearest length of two by four.

"Yes," said Nick. "It would help if you showed the same level of trust in me that I am placing in you."

"You have no understanding of the true measurement of time," said the boy. "Any figure I give you will be meaningless."

"Then take another look inside our heads," said Louise "and show us how clever you are by converting your measurements into ones we understand."

Nick could sense the gritted teeth surrounding Louise's words.

"Planetary rotations are arbitrary and prone to fluctuation."

"I only want to know if we're talking about days or years," said Nick. "I'm not looking for microsecond accuracy."

There was a pause and, perhaps, the merest hint of a resigned sigh. "I will scan collective memory for data on cosmic standards."

Nick waited, running through a list of potential events. Hiroshima, the first radio broadcasts, the first space flight, Voyager, SHIFT. Or would it be something small? Something accidental like the colonist just happening to scan a small patch of desert sky and receiving an unexpected burst of radio traffic . . .

"I have completed my calculations," said the boy. "My friend left the research station approximately four Earth years ago. The memory cloud was discovered nine days ago, three days before your arrival."

Four years. SHIFT launched its first unmanned space craft four years ago.

"You think this is tied to SHIFT?" asked Louise.

"Put yourself in the colonist's place," said Nick. "You're a scientist with an abounding interest in intelligent life and then suddenly one day a spaceship launches from the middle of a desert. Wouldn't you be interested?"

"So he drops everything and takes a look," said Louise. "That'd explain why he was there but what was he doing for four years? Was he on Earth all that time?"

"How long does it normally take for a body to degrade?" Nick asked the boy.

"It would depend upon the manner of its destruction but we would expect to find traces up to six years after the event."

"Six years? But you said he was only missing for four."

"We think that the killing took place elsewhere. You were concerned we would locate the body so you had the memory cloud moved from your colony to the desert area where it was found. Then you staged this elaborate subterfuge of falsifying your memories to make it look like you were fugitive corporeals from a nearby planet you named Earth. We are not that easily fooled. This Earth of yours will be a barren rock. Or worse, a trap."

Nick wasn't sure what to say. How can you argue with someone who regards your entire life a lie?

And there was something else. Something that had been worrying him for most of this conversation. An alien had visited Earth and shortly afterwards been killed. An unstable, paranoid alien who liked to hitch rides in people's heads—perhaps sometimes do a lot more than hitch rides. Wasn't he an accident waiting for an appointment with the US military? Especially if he hung around the SHIFT project.

Which brought Nick to John Bruce and something else that was worrying him. The link between the alien and SHIFT, the damage to John Bruce's mind. Coincidence, or were they connected? Was the alien in Bruce's head during the SHIFT flight when the shielding failed? Was that how he died? Was Bruce ripped in two at the same time?

But . . . if the alien's body took six years to degrade—where was it?

"What if he's not dead?" asked Nick.

"That is not a possibility."

"Why not? All you've proven so far is how he couldn't have been killed. Why not follow up that line of thought with 'what if he's not dead?' Is there another way of creating a memory cloud?"

The boy sighed. "There is but we have dismissed the possibility."

"Why?"

The boy's image flared, impatience tinged his voice. "Because there would have been a warning attached."

"In his memories?" asked Nick.

"Yes."

"But you said yourself his memories were confused."

"In this circumstance they would not have been."

Nick felt like strangling the boy. "Why not?" he asked.

"Because jettisoning one's memories is not something undertaken lightly. It is the supreme sacrifice. A last resort which one would only contemplate if retaining those memories would jeopardise the existence of our colony. It is not something one does in a state of euphoria. It is something one does under threat of imminent capture and interrogation by a hostile, predatory species."

Like ours, wondered Nick. Then quickly stifled the thought.

"Couldn't it have happened by accident?" he asked. "If your friend was unstable couldn't he have pressed the wrong switch?"

"It is a complicated procedure. There is no switch."

"What if he 'went native?'" asked Louise. "Does that happen? If he liked to play inside the heads of corporeals and thought the Council might take that away from him, couldn't he wake up one day and say, 'enough,' throw away his past and start a new life."

"Impossible."

"Why?" asked Nick, his excitement building—thank you, Louise—"wouldn't that explain his euphoria? His old life was one of banishment. He was feeling crippled, under threat and then—suddenly—he sees a way out. Start a new life. It's classic psychology. My life sucks and it's everyone else's fault; so throw away all the bad memories and I'll be happy again."