Crossover (7 page)

The second thing to
surprise him was the impracticality of it. The windows on the
street-side wall looked too clear to be bulletproof. The front door
was wooden, and even if it concealed steel panels, it had been hung
crookedly in the frame, leaving gaps through which gaseous
neurotoxins could easily be pumped. The dented sedan rested on the
driveway rather than behind the bars of the car-port, where it
could be easily sabotaged.

What kind of
operational headquarters was this?

'Welcome to my humble
home,' Ash said, as she walked up the front path toward the
door.

'You
live
here?'

She shot him a
defensive look. 'You got a problem with that?'

'Me? No,' Six said.
'But you should.'

'The best security
isn't obvious to casual observers,' Benjamin said. He sounded like
he was trying to protect the girl's feelings.

'Wrong,' Six said. 'The best security
is
obvious, so as to deter intruders.
And by the way, I'm no casual observer.'

Ash twisted the key in
the lock. 'Take it from a thief,' she said. 'Ostentatious security
draws us in. Gets us wondering what might be inside. Shut your
mouth for a minute, would you?'

She pushed the door
open. 'Hi Dad!'

Dad? Six thought.

There was no response
from inside the house. Ash beckoned. Benjamin followed her into the
house, with Six trailing reluctantly behind.

He found himself in a
dusty living area. A plastic-rimmed clock ticked on the wall. Some
kind of qualification had been framed and placed upon a scratched
wooden side-table. The cream carpet was thin and grey in certain
pathways, indicating to Six that people usually passed through this
room without sitting down.

Today, however, a
middle-aged man with faded corduroy trousers and a vaguely bohemian
air sat cross-legged on the couch.

'Hi Dad,' Ash said
again.

The man's hazel eyes
swivelled behind thick glasses. 'Oh. Hi.' He cleared his throat, as
though he hadn't spoken in a while. 'Hi Ash.'

Benjamin raised his
hand. 'Hey Mr Arthur.'

'Benjamin.' The man
turned to look at Six. 'Hello there.'

'Dad, this is Quentin,'
Ash said. 'He goes to school with Benjamin. I'm helping them with
their group project.'

Six frowned.
Quentin?

'Nice to meet you,
Quentin,' Arthur said. Something caught his eye on the street, and
he turned to face the window.

Six looked back at Ash,
who was already moving deeper into the house. Apparently, the
conversation was over.

Ashley's bedroom was
spare compared to the rest of the house. She had a bed, and a
desktop PC which looked like it had been custom-built from outdated
components. Besides a few books on an unpainted shelf, she seemed
to have no other possessions.

Six entered the room,
and shut the door behind him. 'What's wrong with your father?'

Ash's voice was icy.
'Nothing's wrong with my father.'

Six let it go.
Antagonising his hosts further would serve no purpose.

'So I've got good news
and bad news,' Benjamin said.

'Bad first,' Ash
prompted.

'Uh... it doesn't
really work that way around.'

'Fine. Good first.'

'I've found the
ununoctium.'

Six turned his head
toward Benjamin fast enough to give whiplash to a human.
'Where?'

'Yeah, that's the bad
news,' Benjamin said. 'It's at the top of Vepa Tower.'

Ash swore.

'What's that?' Six
asked.

'A trap, is what it
is,' Ash said. 'Seventy floors high. Only one entrance, protected
by a military checkpoint. The scientists live on-site, so there are
hardly any comings or goings. Anybody who tries to get in will be
scrutinised for hours. And the computer systems are impenetrable,
so we can't authorise ourselves to get in.'

'How do you know so
much about it?'

'We cased it once
before. The world's biggest uncut pink diamond was shipped there
for verification before it was purchased by the museum of natural
history.'

'And you couldn't get
in?'

'We didn't try. It's
impossible.' Ash turned back to Benjamin. 'How do you know it's up
there?'

'Stabilising ununoctium
is really, really complicated and difficult.' Benjamin sat down on
Ash's bed. 'A journalist asked the defense minister what
precautions had been taken to prevent an explosion. The minister
gave the usual speech – a very safe procedure, several layers of
security, blah, blah, blah – and then said the tests were being
done on the top floor of Vepa, so as even if there was an
explosion, the civilian population had nothing to worry about. It's
a long way away from the nearest town, and it's too high up to risk
causing an earthquake.'

'How do I get there?'
Six asked.

Benjamin stared at him.
'Did you hear anything I just said? It's impossible to get in.'

'For you, maybe. Do you
have a map?'

'You're not going
without us,' Ash said.

Six raised an eyebrow.
'Are you going to stop me?'

'The soldiers
will.'

'Unlikely.' Six turned
to leave. He could find a map elsewhere.

'Wait.'

Six looked back. Ash's
brow was furrowed in furious thought. Her gaze was on Six, but he
didn't feel like she was seeing him.

Why is she so desperate
to come with me? he wondered.

'Benjamin,' Ash said.
'Did you ever finish that microwave emitter?'

Benjamin shook his
head. 'I never got it working. The amount of heat required to melt
a padlock–'

'Forget the heat. Can
it transmit microwaves over, say, four hundred metres?'

'Sure. Weak ones.'

'That's all we need.'
Ash pulled a screwdriver out of her handbag, opened the cupboard
door and started unwinding the bolts which attached the coat hook
to the wall.

'What are you
thinking?' Benjamin asked.

'I'm thinking we'll
need rope.'

* * *

'You're sure this won't
give us cancer, or something?' Ash asked.

'What?'

She raised her voice to
be heard over the drumming of the wheels. She'd borrowed her Dad's
car, which wasn't well insulated for sound. 'You're sure this won't
give us cancer?'

Benjamin chuckled
nervously on the back seat as he adjusted the settings on the
tubular machine. 'On the electromagnetic radiation spectrum,' he
said, 'microwave radiation is about as safe as visible light.'

'So why are there all
those warning labels on the back of my microwave oven?'

'Because you're likely
to get electrocuted if you fiddle around back there. And I should
know – I made this out of bits of an old microwave. But there's no
need for you to worry about cancer or electric shock. We're far
more likely to get blown up.'

The steering wheel
shuddered in Ash's hands. She knew he was only half kidding.
'Great,' she said. 'Thanks.'

The boy from the future
sat in the passenger seat, watching the desert crawl past behind
the window. 'This was your idea,' he said.

'Using
the emitter? Yes,' Ash said. 'Doing it tonight? No. That was
your
idea.'

'The longer we wait,
the more the past is influenced by my presence,' Six said. 'And we
don't know how long the ununoctium will be in Vepa Tower. Waiting
could have catastrophic consequences.'

'I just like to be
careful,' Ash said. 'That's all. I triple-check things.'

Benjamin said, 'Does
that mean you'll be asking twice more?'

'Pedant.'

Six leaned forward, and
pointed. 'There. The tower.'

Ash peered into the
blackness between the stars. 'You sure?'

He nodded.

Ash turned off the
headlights. It was unlikely that anyone would be looking in their
direction with a pair of binoculars, but she didn't want to take
the risk.

'Benjamin,' she said.
'How close do you need to be?'

Benjamin consulted his
GPS. 'Another three hundred metres would do it.'

After a few seconds,
Ash lifted her foot off the accelerator and let the car roll to a
gradual stop so the brake lights didn't flash.

Benjamin opened the
door, climbed out, and pulled the microwave emitter after him by
its rubber handles. He leaned back in. 'Keep the radio channels
open.'

'Got it.'

'Good luck. Both of
you.'

'You too,' Ash said.
She couldn't meet his eye. If she saw that he was scared, she would
get scared too.

Six said nothing.

Benjamin closed the
door. Ash drove away, leaving him behind in the blackness.

* * *

Ash rubbed her palms
together, trying to ward off the cold. Her breath clouded in front
of her face. Her toes were numb.

She and Six were
crouched in the shadows about two hundred metres from the tower.
They'd left the car in a shallow ditch behind a low dune. Six was
motionless, apparently impervious to the chilling breeze. A coil of
nylon climbing rope was draped over his shoulder.

Up ahead, soldiers
moved back and forth from tent to tent, spotlit under the halogen
lamps. Equipment jingled on their belts. Heavy boots thudded the
dirt.

There were twice as
many soldiers as there had been a minute ago. It was changeover
time. Half of them had just finished an eight hour shift. The other
half were about to begin their watch.

Behind them, a concrete
bunker lay in the shadows. The lights in the windows were out. The
scientists were probably asleep. Behind that, Vepa Tower loomed
against the night sky, seventy storeys high. A solitary red light
blinked on top, warding off passing aircraft.

'If you succeed in
changing the future,' Ash whispered, 'you'll disappear. Right?'

'Probably.'

'So you and I will
never have met.'

Six nodded. He didn't
seem perturbed by this.

Ash planned to steal
the ununoctium, rather than letting Six destroy it. That way, the
future would still be changed, and Six would disappear, leaving Ash
with several million dollars worth of rare elements to sell.

But if she and Six had
never met, then she wouldn't be here to steal the ununoctium. So
what would happen then?

Maybe I'll find myself
with an $11 million violin in my hands, she thought. It was Six's
appearance which screwed that up.

'We wouldn't be able to
see them,' Six said. 'In my time.'

Ash looked over.
'Hmm?'

Six
pointed at the soldiers. 'We'd have to be much closer. Where I come
from –
when
I come
from – there's so much pollution in the air that no-one can see
more than a few metres ahead of them.'

Ash frowned. 'Can't the
government do something about that?'

'No government. Just
ChaoSonic – the corporation which owns all other corporations.'

'In this country? Or in
the whole world?'

'The rest of the world
is underwater. We would be too, if it weren't for the Seawall.' Six
inhaled deeply. A faint smile flitted across his thin lips. 'I
didn't plan to come here. But I'm glad of the chance to see, and
breathe.'

Ash tried to picture a
world of smog and walls and lawlessness. She couldn't.

'What made the world
the way it is?' she asked. 'A plague? A meteor? Nuclear war?'

'Zombies?' the radio
crackled. Ash had forgotten that Benjamin was listening in.

Six shook his head.
'There was no sudden catastrophe. No apocalypse. Just greed, eating
civilisation one small bite at a time.'

Ash shivered, not just
from the cold. 'Are you almost ready?' she asked Benjamin.

'I've switched it on,'
he said. 'Now we just have to wait.'

They couldn't get
through the checkpoint while it was manned, so they needed to make
the soldiers evacuate. But because the computer systems were so
secure, they couldn't stage a fake alarm.

So they would have to
create a real one.

From his position on
the other side of the base, Benjamin was pointing the microwave
emitter at the top floor of the tower. In theory, the emitter
should agitate the electrons in the ununoctium and trip the warning
sensors, without disturbing the nucleus and creating an
explosion.

Benjamin's theories
usually worked in practice. Usually. Just the same, Ash's teeth
were pressed together as she waited for the alarm.

Ash had expected Six to
ask if turning up the power would blow up the ununoctium,
completing his objective. But he hadn't – in fact, he had expressed
concern for the safety of the soldiers and scientists, and had
insisted on examining the microwave emitter. Whatever else he was,
he wasn't a murderer.

Lucky
for me, Ash thought. Because if I steal the ununoctium, and
he
doesn't
disappear–

An alarm shrieked from
the checkpoint. Even at this distance, Ash had to clamp her palms
over her ears. Whirling red lights appeared on the tip of each
fence post.

The soldiers were
well-trained. They hesitated only a fraction of a second before
springing into action. Some worked on opening the razor-wire gates,
while others disappeared into the bunker to help the scientists
evacuate. By the time the civilians stumbled out in flannelette
pyjamas and bath robes, the gates were open. Everyone fled the
checkpoint across well-worn paths in the dust.

The radio crackled.
'Are they leaving?'

'Like frightened
rabbits,' Ash said. 'Worst security procedure ever.'

'In fairness, every
sensor is telling them that the tower is about to explode. Is Six
ready?'

'He's–'

Ash turned around. Six
was gone.

She looked back at the
tower. Six was sprinting toward the razor wire fence, and had
already crossed an impossible distance. He must have started
running as soon as she took her eyes off him.