Through the Eye of Time (5 page)

The trouble with this was that he found her physically unbearable to be near without being able to touch: his calm and rational self told him not to be such a fool while the rest of him lusted after her like a child in front of a confectionery display. Though he still insisted to himself that he was definitely, emphatically, categorically not in love with her.

This didn't prevent him from offering her a few minutes of rather fawning sympathy: ‘The Director is out of touch,' he agreed. ‘What else can you expect of an old man?'

‘The establishment is going downhill. How can we get on with our work if the systems we rely on, and in particular the information retrieval circuit, are not functioning properly? He smiled. The man actually smiled as though the problem was unimportant. It wouldn't surprise me – it really
wouldn't
surprise me if he doesn't know what the RECONPAN project is all about. You're right, he's too old; out of touch …'

That cold briskness in her voice, she hated it. It sounded in her ears like the voice of someone she wouldn't wish to know. It had an unpleasant grating quality, lacking all trace of emotion.

Léon had the annoying habit of pulling at his finger joints whenever he was listening to anyone, and now he nodded his head sympathetically to the accompaniment of clicking bone.

‘Please don't do that. It goes right through me.'

‘What?' Léon said, startled.

‘Whatever it is you do with your fingers.'

Léon looked down at his empty hands, frowning.

‘Come along, we're wasting time.'

‘Oh yes,' Léon said. He suddenly remembered: ‘Miss Ritblat
in Psycho-Med has been trying to reach you.' He faltered. ‘I'm sorry, I should have told you before.'

Pouline deGrenier never liked speaking to Karla Ritblat, head of the Psycho-Med Faculty, though she had little choice in the matter. The other woman was rigid to the point of being cyberthetic, straight-backed and thin-lipped with a helmet of silver hair: it was Pouline deGrenier thirty years hence – or how she feared she might become if some man didn't come along and claim her. She had her career sure enough, and it was fulfilling, but the essential core of her life seemed to be dribbling inconsequentially away. She felt herself to be in shadow, on the edge of a bright light, never at the true centre of things.

‘I think we're making progress.' Karla Ritblat said when they had made contact. Neither woman bothered with the viewing panel. ‘The cultures are responding to cobalt-7 radiation: we've only tried it in short low-intensity bursts for fear of causing damage to the DNA structure. But the results so far are promising.'

‘How soon will you know if the cultures are able to accept neurochemical data?'

‘We mustn't run before we can walk,' said Karla Ritblat. A gentle admonishment from the headmistress to the pupil teacher. Pouline felt herself flushing. She breathed evenly and said:

‘I shall require a time-scale projection for the next three months to co-ordinate your efforts with ours. The Subject Profile is almost completed.'

‘You'll need a lot of information to fill one hundred billion neuron cells.'

‘I think we have enough,' Pouline deGrenier responded crisply. ‘Everything now depends on the tissue cultures, if and when they're available.' That was one in the eye for Karla Ritblat.

She broke contact to forestall any further allusive comment and became aware that someone was standing at the door to the office. She took in several confused impressions all at once: slender height, the peculiar rake of the shoulders, a lean gaunt face heavily creased near the nostrils and mouth, white hair
cropped short. It was the mythographer Queghan, whom she knew by reputation but had never spoken to or seen at such close quarters.

Her body chemistry was upset: part fear, part fascination.

‘I passed your assistant on the way in. He said it would be all right. If you're busy—'

‘No. Of course. Come in. Sit down.' (Why, Pouline wondered, was she speaking so idiotically, like somebody with a wooden jaw?)

She was thankful when he sat down; his height had been forbidding. He introduced himself, adding that he worked as a mythographer on Level 17. She was thinking furiously what possible reason he could have for coming to see her, and at the same time taking in his strange appearance. She noticed his hands in particular and saw that the nails were pale elongated ovals, almost transparent. She thought, An odd fish.

He began: ‘I don't know too much about the RECONPAN project beyond a potted briefing from the cyberthetic system, but yesterday rather a curious thing happened. Your Section and mine were juxtaposed at a certain world point.'

‘How interesting,' Pouline said tamely. ‘At least it would be if I knew what that meant.'

‘Forgive me, I have this nasty habit of using jargon. I meant there was a coincidence involving our two Sections; some information which went astray.'

‘Ah yes,' Pouline said, none too kindly. ‘So you were the one. There was indeed a mix-up on the information retrieval circuit – either that or somebody had been tampering with the cyberthetic system.' There was a veiled accusation there somewhere.

‘Possibly.' He hadn't spotted the inference or else had chosen to ignore it.

‘What else could it be?'

Queghan held up his hand and ticked the points off on his long fingers. ‘One: the system reported no malfunction within the past twenty-four hours. Two: neither of us received the information we had requested. Three: on the same day you asked for information on Theodor Morell there was a keyboard error and up came Morell's name on the print-out. The odds against
that happening by accident are several billion to one. I haven't computed the exact ratio.'

Pouline shook her head, slightly baffled. ‘All that went wrong, surely, is that I received your information and you received mine. Isn't that what happened?'

‘No, it isn't. I never asked for the information you received. By mistake I punched in the word “quack” instead of “quark”, a one-letter substitution, and the system came up with the nearest approximation to “a charming quack”. But then you received information on the decay rate of quarks which, it so happened, I hadn't asked for.'

By now Pouline was totally lost. She nodded slowly, trying to make sense of it and thinking what a strange colour Queghan's eyes were, neither brown nor blue or—

‘And there could be another mystery.'

‘Which is?'

‘What became of
your
information? I'm assuming you asked for details of Morell. But you didn't receive them and neither did I.'

‘I asked for biographical details to build up a Subject Profile, that's true. But if there wasn't an interchange of information how would you know that? Did the Director mention it?'

Queghan smiled suddenly and quite charmingly: it came as a surprise that his austere face was capable of such mercurial change. ‘It was the only illogical explanation.'

‘Do you base all your assumptions on illogical premises?' she asked. It annoyed her that he seemed to be enjoying a private joke at her expense.

‘I thrive on them,' he said, still smiling.

‘It doesn't get us very far.'

Queghan conceded the truth of this. ‘If we could discover what happened to the Morell biography it might give us a clue.'

‘I don't have time to indulge in detective stories.'

‘Or perhaps it was deliberately suppressed.'

It was Pouline's turn to smile, though it was more cynical than amused. ‘By the cyberthetic system?'

‘That had occurred to me as a possibility. But as you know the system is self-programmed to prevent incorrect or misleading
information coming into circulation. I don't think the system is at fault.'

It wasn't, Pouline realized, only his physical appearance which disturbed her. There was something else. She realized with a swift disquieting shock what it was: he was able to see into her mind. It was as though she was naked in front of him, an affront to the senses that made a cold creeping sickness reach up and envelop her, the taste of iron in her mouth. With an effort of will she said:

‘I fail to see the point of this. Some information has gone astray. It isn't the first time and it won't be the last.'

‘Aren't you curious? And what about the information you received – that wasn't even requested?'

‘I can't explain it.'

‘Neither can I and it worries me. Or I should say that I can think of an explanation but I don't understand it.' He laced his fingers together and sat staring at her. Pouline shifted uncomfortably; it was hateful to be scrutinized like this.

Queghan said presently, ‘Supposing there is a connection between the RECONPAN project and my investigation of quark and anti-quark particles.'

‘Not possible,' Pouline said shortly.

‘There is a theory,' he went on, ‘that alongside our own universe, existing side by side with it, there is a universe made up of anti-quarks. An anti-quark universe. It could be here with us now, at this moment in time, occupying the same spatio-temporal co-ordinate – the only difference being that its basic subatomic constituents are anti-quarks existing in minus time.'

‘Then we should be able to detect it,' Pouline deGrenier said, ever the pragmatic hardliner.

‘Perhaps we can. We can't detect it with our scientific instruments because they can only operate in our own universe. But imagine for a moment that in place of eyes and ears human beings were equipped with X-ray and infra-red sensory equipment. We should see a different kind of universe altogether. The sea and sky would no longer be blue. Solid objects would appear to be transparent. We should be able to hear the stars. We can only picture the universe as it appears to our own limited senses.'

‘I know all this,' Pouline deGrenier said icily. ‘I did a two-year postgraduate course in electromagnetic wave theory.'

‘Then you should have no difficulty grasping the concept of an anti-quark universe existing alongside our own.'

‘We have no proof that it does.'

‘We have no proof that it doesn't.'

‘Very well. Let's say I accept the possibility of what you say. Where does it take us?'

‘To the consideration of another possibility: that some unspecified agency has engineered all this.'

‘Engineered?'

‘The clues have been laid – unless, that is, we're too blind to see them. Something is operating in a stratum of spacetime which normally would be invisible to our senses. Deliberately or accidentally, I don't know which, it has made its presence known to us.'

Pouline gazed at him. Her features had hardened into a frown. She said, ‘What has any of this to do with RECONPAN? Or with Morell? It's sheer nonsense. The project is solely concerned with neurochemical reconstruction of brain cells, with the simulation of the Subject's brain.'

‘That's right,' Queghan said. ‘And we shouldn't forget the Subject you've chosen for experimental trials.'

Pouline looked into those peculiar eyes of his, transfixed by his gaze, and the silence hung in the air between them.

Berlin, July 1938

The trees looked lovely this morning as I walked along the Wilhelmstrasse on my way to the Chancellery. The city gardeners perform an excellent service in keeping the place neat and trim and shipshape. It was a pleasure to be abroad and on such a fine morning.

A tedious incident which took the edge off my good humour and benign disposition: one of the guards, presumably new on the duty roster, stood in my way and asked to see my papers. He obviously didn't know who I was and remained obdurate when I informed him that I was a member of the Sanctum.

‘Papers,' he insisted, barring my way.

I repeated my name, laying emphasis on the
Doktor
, and added that I was Leibarzt to the Führer. He looked rather startled at this, but the buffoon had been given strict instructions and was determined to carry them out to the letter.

When I had presented my papers he went rigidly to attention, his eyes frozen and dead like those of a statue. I told him that if he ever stopped me again, for any reason whatsoever, it would be the worse for him. I think we parted in mutual understanding.

The days pass hectically but none the less pleasantly. There is much activity all around – political activity I refer to – which imbues the whole place with a sense of urgency and purpose. Three new departments have been set up in the past month and there are clerks scurrying everywhere carrying files and memoranda and bits of paper. I enjoy the comings and goings precisely because I am detached from them, an observer rather than a participant – though it is difficult at times
not
to become involved. However, I follow my own course, quietly and without
attracting attention: the time will come when moves have to be made and decisions taken. For the moment I am content to wait.

One advantage of this detachment is the overall view it gives me of those closest to the seat of power and their assorted jockeying for favour and position. I have marked out Bormann as being one of those who will repay close attention and careful study: he is quiet, unobtrusive, but I have noticed in conference that he is ever-watchful, missing nothing with those dark shrewd eyes of his. In particular he watches Himmler, alert to his every political ploy, though it has to be said that the two of them get on well together – that is, they show all the signs of being on close, friendly terms, often dining together and patronizing the same whorehouse.

Of the rest it is hard to choose who would win the award of Prize Idiot at the annual Chancellery ball. They posture about the place, seeking to outdo the others with the splendour of their uniforms and the size of their bodyguards. New notices go up almost every day directing one to this or that new department, the theory being, I suppose, that importance, prestige and power are in direct proportion to the volume of paperwork any one department can manufacture. The more departments, the greater the avalanche of useless confetti.