No Direction Home (13 page)

He nodded. ‘They called them films or movies then. I blame my Dad for that, actually. He was always watching films from that era and I latched on to them.'

‘Again – why that particular era, though?'

‘I promise you, you do
not
want to go there.'

‘Why not?'

‘Once I get started about the late TwentyCee, I could bore the pants off you all night long.'

She stared directly at him, barely smothering a broad smile, then said archly, ‘For all you know, I might actually quite like the notion of you removing my pants. Not to mention the all night long bit…' Before he had a chance to say anything, she went on, ‘How about an edited version, then? Maybe, I don't know…' She shrugged. ‘A…
trailer
, perhaps?'

He grinned at her. ‘Nice one – I think you know more about this whole subject than you're letting on.'

‘You never know...'

‘OK. They were the last films to be made without using CGI all over the place. You know, real locations, real live action, real actors, come to that. They hadn't just turned the whole film making process over to computers back then. Same with the music – they actually performed live then, rather than miming the whole thing.' He grinned. ‘That's the short answer.'

‘Fair enough. Are you going to play any of these for me?'

‘Of course. Which one would you like?'

‘Let's see now…' She turned back to the shelves, hunted along the row of LPs, then took one out. ‘This one?'

‘
Dark Side Of The Moon
?'

‘Their all time classic, surely? And anyway…' Now, she gave him a frankly inviting stare, looking back at him over her shoulder in what was, to him, an incredibly sexy, provocative pose. ‘I read somewhere that Side One is ideal for making love to. Is that true?'

Vinter almost choked on his drink, then realised that she had deliberately timed her comment to perfection, waiting for him to raise the glass to his mouth just so she could have that effect. He smiled at her, trying to give the impression of smooth, suave sophistication. ‘Well, it does end with something that sounds pretty much like a female orgasm, yes.'

She grinned wickedly. ‘So how about we test that theory? How does that sound?'

Inexplicably, his throat had suddenly gone dry; he took a sip from his drink. ‘Sounds good to me.'

It was as if an unspoken message passed between them; they both put their glasses down on the desk in front of the shelves, then she simply came into his arms and they began to kiss, her tongue flickering and darting against his as she pressed close to him. By the time their lips reluctantly slid apart, they were both breathing more rapidly. ‘Of course,' he said, dreamily, nuzzling into her neck, feeling her gently nibbling at his ear, ‘We could always try it without the music.'

‘That sounds even better.'

*****

And later: ‘So, did I?'

‘Did you what?'

‘Sound like the female orgasm on the LP?'

‘What LP?'

A soft chuckle. ‘Right answer…'

*****

Another memory; after that first time sleeping together, she'd been worried that he would think her too easy and would simply dump her once he had got what he wanted…
As if – I was too busy counting my blessings for that…

The wedding – six years later, after they'd been living together for two years; she'd looked stunning in her wedding dress and he was convinced he'd spent the entire ceremony and reception with a huge grin stitched across his face. And, somehow, the wedding night had been special, even though they weren't doing anything they hadn't already done God knows how many times by then…

Emma's birth –
Look, I am fucking pushing, dammit! I'll tell you something, though, Vinter, I'm not letting you anywhere near me again, not after this, I promise you
… The delight on her face as she held the baby…
When did I say never again? Just shut up and get it in there – I've waited weeks for this…
Emma coming into the bedroom just as they had been approaching orgasm, wondering what the noise was… She'd grown up so fast, one minute tottering around on unsteady legs, the next, or so it seemed, riding her bike over the rebuilt BMX track. And falling off it… She'd been a complete tomboy, but bright and intelligent at school, absolutely determined to become a surgeon when she grew up…

*****

He became aware that he had not been consciously listening to the music for minutes now, but that the vocals were about to kick in –
only the Floyd would have an eight minute instrumental intro to a song –
and there it was:
Remember when you were young…

And now the memories started to flood in, but now almost at random: Mum and Dad, Tess, the border collie he had grown up with and how much he'd missed her when she had to be put down, taking bloody exams at school, learning to drive, his first time for sex, going to see Spurs with Dad, the letter telling him he had been accepted at Oxford, waking up the morning after a party without a clue where he was or how he had got there… Gradually, the memories seemed to blend one into another in a kaleidoscope of sights, sounds, impressions and freeze-frame images, until he was left with what seemed almost like a synopsis of his life, a framework into which he could slot the memories once he had them sorted out…

The life story that would have been in the file that Becky Adebayo saw…

Born 2088, London, UK, went to Balliol College, Oxford 2106 –
so it wasn't Edinburgh, for Christ's sake…
graduated four years later with an MA in English Literature. Met Angela Maddison at University while in his Third Year, the two of them setting up home together on her graduation four years later. Recruited by UNSEC on his graduation, initially worked in London. Married Anji, 2114, both moved to New York on his transfer there, daughter Emma born 2116. Family moved to Australia 2118 when UN Headquarters moved to Canberra.

But now the music began to impinge as it faded out at the end of the long final track; reluctantly, Vinter dragged himself back to reality, feeling a sense of numbness – it had been too much to take in, a whole lifetime's worth of experiences shunted into his mind in just forty minutes. It would probably take him days to assimilate all of it; at the moment, it seemed almost like something that had happened to someone else – even Anji and Emma seemed remote, somehow. He removed the earphones, took another sip from his beer, noting that he had drunk most of it without even realising, then leaned back in his chair.

So that's who I really am. Someone's buggered about with my memory big time – but why? And who?

Well, the answer to the second question was pretty obvious – New Dawn, because they wanted him nice and obedient by PlanetFall, only it hadn't worked out that way. They had excised the memories of Anji and Emma and the associations with Oxford because of all the discussions he had with Anji about New Dawn and EarthCorp being just as bad as each other, which would have made converting him to New Dawn more difficult, especially as they'd also deleted memories of New Dawn atrocities – the San Francisco nerve gas attack, the sterilisation of the Kansas wheatfields, and so on…

But what had happened to Anji and Emma? He hadn't just left them behind, had he?

But there was nothing; there was a gap in his memory from about a year before the launch – he remembered absolutely nothing of that last year. Nothing. As far as he could tell, his last memory was of working in the Canberra Office and talking to a colleague about something called the Demeter Project – and that was it. A total blank after that, until he'd woken up in the Med Area four weeks ago. He didn't remember boarding the ship, or even being selected for it – nothing.

Why was that part of his memory still missing, even now? The most crucial part, as far as he was concerned…

It was only then that he saw the flashing icon at the bottom of the screen – it sure as hell hadn't been there when he'd accessed the album. He moved the cursor to click on it, then hesitated for a moment. Presumably, it had been downloaded from the ship's network while he had been listening to the music and he hadn't noticed it because of the torrent of memories, but it was obviously the result of some deeply embedded command in the system – was it for his eyes only?

Better to play safe…
He picked up his personal comp, disconnected it from the shipboard system, then copied the file to it. Of course, if Ferreira had taken the time to reconfigure the network, there was no way that he could be certain that the comp was now truly standalone, but Ferreira had been more than a little preoccupied with Stalker ever since taking over, so the chances were pretty good that he hadn't even looked at the network properly yet. He took the comp over to the sofa and sat down.

OK, let's see what this is…
He clicked on the icon and when
Password?
was displayed, he had typed in
Crazy Diamond
before it dawned on him that he hadn't even had to think about it – he had known the password anyway.

And then the screen was filled by an image that he recognised instantly.

It was himself.

No, not quite – it's me, only older. He looks as though he's in his early forties – the age I'm supposed to be. But it's still me, for fuck's sake…

But where was this recorded? The other Vinter was sitting at a desk, with a window behind him that looked out over a scene of rolling hills, an almost idealised landscape that was probably digitised. The face was older, more lined, with hair that was beginning to grey at the temples – the face he'd seen in the mirror every morning on Earth.

An older version of me, in other words. Or me before I went into cryosleep… so why don't I remember recording this?

Vinter sighed in realisation:
He isn't me… or not this version of me. Fuck…

I'm a clone.
The realisation came suddenly out of nowhere, but there was no other explanation for what was on the screen.
A fucking clone.

Something created in a laboratory, like Frankenstein's Monster…

Bastards.

He stared at the image for several seconds, then shook his head slowly and clicked on
Play
.

The Vinter on the screen began speaking straight away. ‘Hallo, Chris. It's me – or it's you. Sort of. It's a long story, so you'll have to bear with me. I'll get the difficult bit out of the way first – you're a clone, although if you've really got the IQ you're supposed to have, you'll have figured that out the moment you saw my face. The reason you're getting this message is because, until now, you've had a false set of memories implanted by New Dawn, one that is intended to make you loyal to them and which overlays your original memories, which you're now accessing, otherwise you wouldn't be listening to this at all. And
that
sentence could have been better constructed, couldn't it, especially for someone with an English degree from Oxford… Anyway.

‘I should imagine it feels a bit strange listening to me. It's different for me because I'm not actually talking to you face to face, even though I know pretty much what you're going to look like – me, about fifteen years ago.' He hesitated, then continued, ‘Might as well cut to the chase. There's something you need to know about me, so we'd better get it out of the way right now.' He lifted up a remote device from the desk and operated it; the camera panned back until it became apparent that he was sitting in a wheelchair. ‘That's it – I'm paralysed from the waist down and have been for the past two years. Terrorist bomb at UN Headquarters in Canberra – severed the spinal cord. Kind of cramps my style a bit, but, hey, I got lucky – there were seventeen people killed in that blast and we're still looking for the bastards that did it, but that's another story…' He broke off suddenly, looking away and the image abruptly jumped; presumably, he had paused the camera, before resuming.

‘The point is that, apparently, they specifically wanted me on the
Terra Nova
– some crap about me being the best man for the job, which was why I'd been selected in the first place. So they had this clone thing going anyway and asked me if I minded being cloned, the idea being that the clone would have all my memories fed into it – well,
him
, really – so that he could take my place on
Terra Nova.
However, the new Me would come with various enhancements, the sort that could only be introduced during the cloning process – apparently they have to be there right from the start, so the body can adapt to them while it's being grown. And “grown” is the right word – the body's growth rate is boosted, so that it reaches its adult stage in about eighteen months. It's like
Brave New World
and with the same dehumanising potential – they chose to make you superhuman, but they could use the technology to produce human beings with barely enough awareness to perform basic manual tasks if they wanted – the whole range from Alpha to Epsilon, in other words…' The screen Vinter rubbed his face, tiredly. ‘And at the moment, you probably won't have a clue what I'm talking about, will you, unless they've put in memories of every book I've ever read…

‘Anyway, you were grown in a lab just outside Canberra and then placed in your cryosleep chamber two days before
Terra Nova
's launch. Your memories – the ones you've got now – are mine, or at least some of them, downloaded into a computer and digitised but don't ask me to explain how because I haven't a clue –
my
grasp of anything scientific or technological is limited, to say the least. Yours won't be, apparently…

‘These memories won't have all come back yet, but I'm told they will over a period of time. How long that will be is anyone's guess, because this is the first time it's been done, so we're all in the dark about it. Only they haven't included any memories after the incident that put me in
this
thing.' He gestured downwards at the wheelchair and Vinter could sense the bitterness in the action. ‘I asked them not to. You really aren't missing anything, take it from me.