The Fatal Tree (27 page)

Kit glimpsed the familiar collection of symbols and knew the stranger’s identity. They had met before. Only where once the man had been vigorous and in the prime of life, he was now a wizened old man; and where once the tattoos splashed across his torso had been bold and bright indigo, now they were faded, grey, and sagging with the skin on which they were inscribed. “It’s
him
!” gasped Cass. “It’s Arthur Flinders-Petrie… again!

And he’s ancient.”

The old Arthur gazed with rheumy eyes at all the strangers standing around the pool. “You should not be here,” he said, his voice a wheeze in his chest. “This place is not for you.”

“That’s what Friday told me,” murmured Cass. “His exact words.”

The wind gusted sharp and chill, rending the last leaves from the trees. Threatening clouds loomed overhead.

“It’s Damascus again,” moaned Wilhelmina.

The young Arthur, furious, tightened his grip on the body of his dead wife and started forward. “Stand aside, sir. I will not be detained any longer.”

Kit refused to be moved. “What you mean to do is wrong. I can’t let you do it.”

“Try to stop me.” Arthur made to barge ahead, but Kit put his hands on Arthur’s chest and held him back. “Gianni! Help me!” The elderly Arthur answered Kit’s call for help. Stepping quickly behind his younger self, he opened his mouth and, with unexpected vigour, shouted, “You there! Turn around and look at me!”

The young Arthur ceased struggling to get past Kit and glanced over his shoulder. His features drained of whatever colour was left.

“Stay away from me,” he cried. “Whoever you may be, stay away.”

“I will not,” replied the old Arthur. “It has taken me a lifetime to find you. I will not walk away now. I mean to stop you from making the worst mistake of your life.”

“It is a trick,” complained the young Arthur. “I don’t know you, sir.”

“You know me, Arthur, as I know you.” The old man moved closer to his younger self. Kit and the others watched, spellbound.

“And I know that what you came to do must not be done.” He pointed to the body in young Arthur’s arms. “Xian-Li is dead, and so she must remain. You have no idea of the hardship that will flow from this wicked selfishness.”

Arthur closed his eyes and shook his head. “No… no… no,” he murmured. “It is lies – all lies. Get out of my way.”

The old Arthur moved closer to his younger self. “Hear me!

Your damned stubbornness will be the death of many. You may snatch a few years of happiness, but it will bring untold suffering on scores yet unborn. That is reason enough to stop you. And, by God, you will be stopped.” The young Arthur glanced away, as if appealing to the others to intervene.

“Look at me!” The elder Arthur held out his arms as if he would take the dead Xian-Li from his younger self. “She is dead, Arthur. Her death is already woven into the fabric of the universe. It is meant to be. Are you wise enough to know who should live and who should die? Are you the Lord God Almighty now, that you can grant life or take it away?”

With Kit and the others distracted by the clash between the two Arthurs, Burleigh saw his chance. He stepped yet deeper into the Spirit Well. The wind swirled and whined through the newly bare upper branches, and thunder rolled in the distance. Gianni noticed the movement and rushed to Kit’s side. “Burleigh is making his move! Hurry!”

Kit whirled around. “Keep Arthur back,” he shouted and plunged into the pool. He reached Burleigh in three running strides, seized him by the collar of his coat, and yanked him bodily backward. Burleigh twisted and made a wild swipe with his fist.

The blow struck Kit on the side of the head, but Kit held on. The next swing missed and Kit edged back a step, hauling Burleigh with him.

Burleigh twisted in his grasp, but Kit clung on, gaining another step. The Shadow Lamp, spitting sparks and throwing beams of light across the pool, sizzled and popped. Burleigh, unable to connect a solid punch, tried to squirm out of his coat. He succeeded in getting one shoulder free, but Kit forced him back another step.

Gianni and Cass rushed to the edge of the bank, ready to help when Kit gained another step or two.

“Give it up,” Kit shouted. “It’s over.”

“Never!” shouted Burleigh. He freed the other shoulder and pulled one arm from the sleeve.

Kit felt the coat slip off and made a desperate lunge as Burleigh attempted to transfer the Shadow Lamp to his free hand. The action knocked it from Burleigh’s grasp and sent it tumbling through the air to land in the pool a few feet away. Still sparking and fizzling, it rested briefly on the surface and then slowly sank into the depths of the Spirit Well. Burleigh spun around and struck Kit a blow to the head. Kit staggered back but held on, pulling Burleigh with him.

Gianni seized the struggling Burleigh and Cass took hold of Kit; together they dragged both men onto the bank.

“Get back, everybody!” shouted Mina. “Something’s happening!”

Out in the pool where the Shadow Lamp had sunk, the liquid was glowing with a lurid light and the surface was quaking as if agitated from below by something large and angry. The turgid liquid did not so much bubble as heave and roil.

Even as they watched, the glow spread into fingers – a blush of ruddy-gold tendrils snaking through the translucent fluid. Miniature bolts of lightning streaked away, losing themselves in the unfathomed deeps. The glistering luminescence spawned a host of unusual shapes: rings and spirals and half-moon crescents with lines and whorls and zigzag slashes… shapes they all knew by heart; they had seen them inscribed on the Skin Map and painted on the walls of a tomb in Egypt and a Stone Age cave. But these glittering glyphs were not the two-dimensional representations, nor were they static: they moved and morphed, merging and melding, each becoming part of another, joining and combining in new and more elaborate formations before dividing and fragmenting, only to reunite with other fragments in different configurations to create new three-dimensional objects – like miniature figurines made of diaphanous strands and filaments of light.

The objects proliferated, each spawning new ones, and those splintering off to form still more. The surface of the pool quivered and bulged; the bulge expanded, glowing with an ominous purple light.

“That can’t be good,” said Cass.

“We should leave,” said Wilhelmina. “Now!”

“Run!” shouted Kit. Snatching Cass by the hand, he pulled her away.

Gianni and Wilhelmina spun around and started for the jungle.

They managed only three or four flying steps before they were overtaken by the shock wave of a horrendous explosion. The sound, like that of a runaway jet engine or a volcano igniting, shook the ground beneath their feet, and the world blanked out in a blaze of brilliant, all-consuming fire.

D
irector Segler slumped in an overstuffed chair on the secondfloor lobby of the JVLA headquarters.It had been a long,exasperating night – the third in a row – and he had slept only minutes snatched among meetings, phone calls, and virtual conferences with colleagues from Illinois to Australia. Eyes closed, he could hear the electronic hum of distant machines churning over the latest data gathered by his massive radio telescope and the shush of air-conditioning forever recycling the same flat air. He also heard soft footsteps padding toward him across the carpet.

“Sorry to wake you, chief,” said Leonard Dvorak in a hushed voice.

“I’m not asleep – just resting my eyes.” He tilted his head to see his technical director standing over him with an odd, almost apologetic look on his face. “Whatcha got?”

“I can’t – I mean, I don’t really know…” He glanced down at a paper in his hand. “But I thought you should see this.”

Segler rubbed a hand over his face and sat up. At this rate, it was very likely that he would never enjoy a full night’s sleep again, he thought. On second thought, with time itself ending in a few days, that was one less thing he would have to worry about. He reached out and took the offered paper.

“What is this?” he asked, scanning the page. It was a string of equations and values. There were no words that he could see. “Lay it out for me.”

“I noticed a slight differential in the current scan and just started playing with the numbers. I plugged them into our prediction formula and this is what came out.” The technical director gave his boss a fishy look. “I thought you should see it.”

“Okay.” Segler yawned again. “I’ve seen it. So?”

“Don’t you think it’s… well, strange?”

The director sighed. “Strange, Leo? My office has been invaded by NASA and I am a prisoner in my own facility. I haven’t slept horizontal in I don’t know how long, and the last meal I had came from a vending machine that takes only quarters. I haven’t seen my wife in a week, and as things are going I will probably never see her or speak to her again. Fox News and CNN and NBC and the BBC and the
New York Times
and everyone else with a camera and microphone are all sniffing around like jackals on the scent of a kill, and we are only hours away from this story going viral and inciting a global panic that will demolish whatever society we have left. And if all that was not enough, the president of the United States calls me every hour to find out what I’m doing to save the planet.” He thrust out his chin in defiance of his besetting woes. “So forgive me if I seem a little too preoccupied to guess the meaning of your numerical riddles.”

“Sorry, chief.”

“Forget it. Just tell me, okay? Can you do that, Leo?”

Dvorak stared at his boss, then swallowed and said, “It’s just that the numbers indicate that our anomaly has changed.”

“Define changed.”

“The rate of blueshift appears to be slowing. Not only that, it looks” – Dvorak paused to find the right word – “lumpy.”

“Lumpy?”

“Yeah, you know… like it could be breaking up somehow.”

Segler jerked to attention. He leaned forward and examined the equations more closely. “Breaking up – are you sure?”

“Not a hundred percent,” the technical director confessed. “But pretty sure. The numbers don’t lie, chief.” He tapped the page in his boss’ hand. “Blueshift is slowing and returning to the red. It’s happening pretty fast.”

“How fast is pretty fast?”

Leo frowned. “Well, I can’t tell. The scan isn’t complete, obviously

– but if the trend holds true, we won’t be able to keep up with it.”

Segler jumped to his feet, all thoughts of exhaustion forgotten. “Who else has seen this? Who knows about it?”

“Nobody. Like I said, I was just fooling around with the equations. But when the scan finishes, others are sure to notice. We’re all looking at the same thing, you know.”

“How long before the scan finishes?”

“It’s got another four hours to run.”

Segler nodded. “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do. First off, keep this under your hat. Don’t breathe a word to anybody. I’m going to terminate the current scan and start another right away. Set it up. Narrow focus, zero in on the region where you picked up the greatest – um, lumpiness. Get the TA coordinates and be ready to push the button when I say the word.”

“What about the NASA boys? They’ll know something is up if you terminate the scan and start recalibrating the array.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll handle them.” Segler started for one of the unoccupied offices. “You hurry downstairs and clear the decks – get Patrick to help you run the new numbers as they come in. I want a second set of eyes on this. If it checks out, I’ll get Hernandez at Aricebo to drop everything and run corroboration for us.”

“And then?” wondered Dvorak.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In a few hours we should have a better idea what’s going on out there. Until then, we keep it low key.” Segler sent his technical director away, then called to him as he headed for the stairs. “By the way, have you seen Dr. Clarke around? Is he down in the den?”

“He was last time I saw him – that was an hour ago.”

“If he’s still down there, tell him I need to see him up here right away.”

“You could page him…”

“I want to keep this to ourselves for now, okay?” Segler said. “No sense getting people all worked up if it turns out to be a false alarm.” The elevator arrived and the door slid open. “Go!”

The director returned to his office and slid into his chair; he grimaced at the phone, hoping no one would call him until he had a chance to either verify or disprove Dvorak’s observation. He did not doubt his technical director, but the stakes were ultra-high, and before he went on record with any mind-blowing revelations, he wanted to be absolutely convinced. He was still planning his next moves when there was a knock at the door and Tony Clarke poked his head into the room. “You rang, Sam?”

“That was quick.”

“I was already on my way up to see you when I ran into Dr. Dvorak. What’s up?” He stepped into the room and closed the door.

“You were coming up to see me?” asked the director.

“To ask you if I could go home,” Tony explained simply. “There’s nothing more I can do here. I’d like to see my daughter before…” He paused, then let the thought go. “You know.”

“If it were up to me we’d all be home in our beds right now, Tony. I hope you know that.” He shook his head in sympathy. The last few days had aged his friend years; he was looking gaunt and haggard, as if hollowed out by some wasting disease. Before Tony could object or reply, he hurried on. “But listen, we may be on to something that could get us all home very soon.”

“I’m listening.” Tony moved to the desk and folded himself into one of the visitors’ chairs. “What sort of something?”

“A game changer,” said Segler. “Leo was just up here, and he may have found evidence that the universe is no longer contracting. He’s got new blueshift figures that seem to indicate the rate of contraction is slowing. He thinks redshift has restarted.”

“The last scan is still running, and so far – ”

“I know. He told me.” The director shoved the piece of paper across the desktop to his friend. “Have a look – this is what he came up with.”

Tony pulled the page to him and read through it quickly. Halfway down he stopped, went back to the top, and started again, and then read it all once more just to be sure he hadn’t missed anything. “I assume Dr. Dvorak didn’t pull these numbers from thin air?” said Tony, running his finger along a relevant line of figures.

“The equations are Leonard’s,” Segler confirmed. “The numbers he plugged in came from the current scan. He pulled them on the fly – I guess he noticed discrepancies he thought didn’t make sense.”

“What this shows is that the contraction in sector B240-22N has slowed significantly,” Tony observed.

“Leo thinks there’s more to it than that. He thinks the anomaly may be breaking up.”

“But that’s impossible.” Tony lifted his gaze from the page now clutched tightly in his hand. “Contractions in the fabric of the universe do not simply disperse like so much fog on the wind.”

“Tell me about it.” Segler held out his hand for the paper. “That’s why we’re keeping quiet about this until we’ve got an idea of what is actually going on out there” – he gestured vaguely at the ceiling – “in the great beyond.”

“Good call,” agreed Tony, handing back the paper. “What’s the next step?”

Director Segler outlined his plan and Tony listened, nodding from time to time in agreement. Segler concluded, saying, “It would be a massive help if you could work directly with Leo on this. I told him to have Patrick help with the donkey work, but it would be good to have a steady hand on the wheel to, you know…” He shrugged. “Keep things from drifting off course.”

“I hear you – and I agree. We want this nailed down tight before we take it to Bayer and his crew.”

“Let’s just say I don’t want to be the kid who cried ‘False alarm!’ while Rome burned.”

“Only this time, if Rome goes up in flames, nobody is going to care – or even remember.”

Segler pulled a sour face and Tony stood. “I’ll head downstairs

– unless you have any other bombshells to throw at me.”

“No, that’s it. You go. I’ll stay up here and keep NASA busy. Remember, don’t let on about the redshift – at least until we get outside confirmation. And pray this nightmare is really over.”

Tony crossed to the door, his step markedly lighter, his posture straighter than when he first entered the room. He paused with his hand on the doorknob and glanced back. “We do seem to forget that we’re not in this alone.”

Segler gave him a rueful nod. “Too true.”

Tony made his way down to the Rats’ Nest where he found Leonard Dvorak and Keith Patrick in a far corner hunkered down over a bank of monitors. “The reversal pattern is holding,” Dvorak announced as Tony joined them.

Tony glanced at the monitor and then looked at the clock; it was a little after four thirty. Oddly, he did not feel tired anymore. “I think we’re all going to wake up tomorrow and wonder what all the fuss was about.”