Sand Glass (5 page)

‘Do you see the
mistake?’ Marcia asked me.

‘No.’

‘Come on you
do! Think!’

‘There’s
nothing wrong with the letter.’ I said and looked up.

‘Yes there is.’
Janey interjected, ‘the only people who know my location are my
parents, and the detective investigating the crash. This should
have been sent to the lab at the University. Or a "care of" address
I occasionally use.’

‘So how did we
get here?’

‘Marcia rang my
mother.’

‘But how did I
get here?’

‘A friend told
you. Jules I believe. He spoke to them too. The request came from
another who my parents do trust.’

‘Psyche
Girl?’

‘I believe that
is how you Men refer to the Dear Doctor. You really must be more
inventive.’

This was so
like my Janey that I started to smile.

‘The name is
also wrong.’ I said without glancing at it again.

‘Pardon?’

‘You were
always “Janey Amber”. I never knew about the “Arden” until later.
And you didn’t either; I mean the You in there….the expedition we
were on together. It’s as if they want to get rid of you
permanently.’

‘You mean it
was them?’ she turned away, then looked at Marcia who rolled her
eyes sideways towards me.

‘Tell me what
you think. I know it is speculation. Tell me the truth.’

‘I think there
is a danger of them trying to stop you.’

‘Then why
involve me?’

‘Because you
were the key to the experiment itself.’

‘You mean all
my initial trials actually led to something that worked? In another
reality….the reality you have just come from?’ her eyes went round
and hungry with curiosity.

‘Of course they
did! But if they needed to get rid of you.’ I struggled a little on
how it would be; she was after all a scientist and a very clever
one; ‘You invented it. Everyone knows you did in that place. And I
believe that they only would try to get rid of you after you
invented it.’

‘Yes. I see.’
She went quiet.

‘There is a
point to consider,’ said Marcia, ‘that if they were really fitting
in with this they would have addressed it to our Harriet here.’

‘Then we would
have known they were lying.’ I said, ‘Inside the anomaly she was
always called Janey Amber. They knew because they already knew…
which means.’

‘I killed him!’
Janey stood up quickly.

‘He’s not
actually dead.’ I was startled by her sudden movement.

‘He did suffer
it.’ said Marcia, ‘And that is more the issue.’

I looked to
Marcia, ‘We need to get the people who remember together. Then we
need to get back to Main Base, and take a transport to the ice
fields. Marcia, I need you. Your knowledge, your memory. I need you
to give me my tag back as well.’

‘What about the
pendant?’ Janey eyed me strangely.

‘Oh!’ I drew
the chain over my head, and slowly gathered it into her palm.

Janey looked
away, and she spoke in such a low voice I could barely hear it:
‘Jared was wearing this; in the crash. He didn’t have it on when
the ambulance crew took us from the wreckage. The investigators
searched for it for us. It had disappeared.’

‘He took it
with him.’ I pressed her hand shut over the small oblong mirror
edged with a quotation.

‘It’s Psalm 32.
Did you know? I had it made especially for Jared.’ She got up and
left the little plant-fronded sitting room, shying from the bright
natural light.

‘Give her a
little time.’ said Marcia. ‘We are about to do something that has
never been done by normal people.’

‘Walk on
water?’

‘Don’t be
facetious. But yes, if you like, perhaps something similar to
that.’

‘What does
Psalm 32 say?’

‘It the one
that starts: Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose
sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not
count against him…. And so on. It not one of the longest but has
four or five verses I think.’

‘What was Jared
going to be interviewed for?’

‘I can’t
say.’

‘You can’t or
you won’t?’

‘I won’t.’
Marcia’s eyes narrowed, she was giving it all to be strong. I hated
the blundering idiot that I was. Upsetting Janey and Marcia within
the space of five minutes.

Janey choose
that moment to come back in. she looked like she had been crying,
but since I didn’t want to appear more of an insensitive Oaf, I
opted for pretending I’d not noticed.

‘What can I do
to help?’ she asked.

‘You can get us
back in.’ said Marcia. ‘Davey?’

‘Yes. Good. She
is the boss of the thing. We just need the others on the team as
well. They can get us equipment, supplies, batteries etc.; and
rope.’

‘Rope?’ Janey
seemed cheered by the thought.

‘Yeah…, always
a good idea in a tight spot.’ I said, ‘Marcia. Anything I’ve
missed?’

‘Tags. That’s
what we need from George. Preferably blank ones, so we can dump
them if needed.’

‘Ok.’ said
Janey, ‘So shall I get in touch, and accept their gracious
invitation?’

Marcia and I
looked at each other. ‘It’s dangerous.’ I said;

‘It’s difficult
to fool people unless they’re idiots.’ said Marcia.

‘Don’t worry,’
I said, ‘I think I have the perfect plan.’

Alex seemed
quite at ease with all of us crammed into his front room. He
dispensed chocolate biscuits with largesse.

Jules was next
to me on one squashy settee thing. George, Sam and Kyle were on the
large one. Everyone else was perched or sunk onto an assortment of
chairs and stools. Violette was sliding down onto Jules from the
arm of the chair. He finally tipped her and she relaxed onto his
knee. Her fine blonde hair was flopping over her jumper and on
Jules and sticking like static to his hand. He smoothed his palm
over her hair to stop the flyaway.

‘I’m quite
happy to allow anything up to the horizontal Mambo.’ Alex boomed,
‘But you will have to help me get the tea first.’

‘Of
course.’

Violette left
the room, and Janey and Marcia both frowned as all the blokes
seemed transfixed by her lush thighs in the leggings undulating out
of the room beneath her oatmeal giant chunky knit.

‘Definitely a
ten.’ said George.

‘You work with
her!’ Marcia was clearly disgusted.

‘Not anymore.
Anyway professional judgement is easier to accept if wrapped up in
the right parcel.’

‘I’m surprised
you didn’t say “baggage”!’ Marcia was crossly trying to make us
behave.

The other lads
were Joe, James, and Adam. The latter declared that the whole thing
had been a trick, but if there was compensation to be had he was
in. he seemed like he was joking. Janey sat by herself in a little
corner by one of Alex’s plants. She said hardly a word. But
murmured a thanks as the tea came round.

Alex brought in
another kitchen chair and parked it next to Janey. Violette
promptly sat down in it. She had a whispered conversation that I
couldn't quite overhear. Not that I was exactly trying to. Just a
few stray words escaped. Violette put her arm round Janey's
shoulders in the way that girls do when secrets of an unhappy
nature are being discussed. I noticed Janey's eyes flicker upwards
towards me. She turned away then and Violette handed her a
tissue.

‘Come on
Jules!’ said Adam, ‘You really are the darkest horse ever.’

‘Well….when I
was five I could win chess matches.’

‘You played
chess when you were five?’ Sam was fiddling with an unlit
cigarette. He put it back in the box. ‘You were five?’

‘Yes. But it
was against my cousin.’ Jules winked at me.

‘Oh yeah?’ said
George, ‘But isn’t she….’

‘Five?’ Sam
said again. The lads spluttered tea and biscuit crumbs.

‘He doesn’t
know.’ said Joe.

‘Ok Genius.’
Alex interrupted, ‘So how do we save the world?’

‘Five?’ Sam was
fixated.

‘Someone punch
him out.’ said James.

‘Has anyone
heard from Oliver?’ George flipped open a lined reporter pad.

‘No,’ said Joe,
‘he did say he would be out of touch for a week or two.’

‘We could do
with Oliver.’ said George.

‘Let me get
this straight;’ Alex said loudly, ‘you are going to stop someone
who has the ultimate weapon at their disposal. They can simply
change history itself?’

‘But they
cannot make people choose things against their will.’ said Jules,
‘we always have the freedom to act.’

‘But choices
often depend on what you know. Without certain bits of information
different choices are possible… but still within the boundaries of
what a give person would act upon?’

‘Yes.’ said
Jules.

Kyle offered
Alex the biscuits packet back, ‘Hey! You get it!’

‘Yes of course
I do.’ Alex waved a biro at the group, ‘I’m at least as intelligent
as Davey here. And I have a better level of scepticism about the
origins of self-indulgence of obnoxious people.’

‘He’s trying to
work out if it’s a compliment.’ James glanced at me.

For the next
twenty minutes we talked around the subject. And George made notes
on the pad. We theorised on the exact nature of the doubles and put
forward the idea that at least more than one coexisting reality
could continue to operate after the experiment was at an end. Jules
spoke to the group, and I knew was simplifying for their sake. Kyle
and Sam just had a puzzled but concentrated look. George a worried
frown, and after about ten minutes of advanced level statements by
Jules, and ignorant questions the group started to get fidgety.
Trying to pick apart Jules’ largesse in sharing the kind of things
that are normally only heard in among fellow physicists with about
three degrees each; they got rowdy and began demanding more tea.
Alex seemed quite at ease, as if he was waiting for something. He
stood with a calculating expression on his face, and began to
gather up the mugs.

‘Perhaps a game
of scrabble?’ asked Joe.

‘It certainty
couldn’t be worse than getting nowhere.’ said Kyle.

The serious
discussion, if there had been one at all descended into chit chat,
and idle banter, with the occasional rude comment thrown in.
Violette, who had been quiet for some time, left the room, and went
upstairs. Bathroom I guessed, or to get away from us lot for five
minutes.

‘The problem,
gentlemen…., Marcia….’ said Janey firmly from the corner. The room
settled into an expectant silence, and they all turned towards her.
I saw a bewildered curiosity in Jules’ eyes in particular. This
was, for him, eerie and discomforting in the extreme.

She waited
until they had settled down and stood up. She took a deep breath
and spoke with that melodious hypnotic tone that I so associated
with Janey from Cloud Field: ‘The problem can be stated thus: there
is a day and an hour at some point in the past when our destinies
diverged away from what would have happened.’ She moved among us
talking; she took the pen from George’s hand; ‘You don’t know when
that was. And because it was induced by Someone rather than
Something, we are now waiting for this divergence to resolve
itself. Homeostasis is the concept I need you to consider
gentlemen. Things have a system built in where the balance will
always be maintained. If there is a kink in the line, it will kink
somewhere else too. Unkinked, then the other will too. As anyone
knows who has ever played with a garden hose.’

There was a
ripple of amused agreement, she had their full attention now.

‘You may laugh,
but there is a serious matter of how we affect each other. We are
connected. Lives are connected. And while the wave form that was
generated can only directly touch those in the immediate area of
its effect, the change thus wrought travels outwards; multiplying
up as you go. Some things are dead ends. Some are active as
consequential sequences for a long period of time. But in the end
everything will balance itself. Heat cools, cold warms up. The
alternate place has environments; that is to say, if you took out
all the bumps and hollows, it will cancel to a flat line.’ She
turned towards me then, and her tone although it seemed not to
change was more brittle like the hard gleam on glass, rather than
the warm reflection in a pearl; ‘That is why… if Davey here is
kissed by a woman who prefers his company to any other; She will
have started a chain reaction of consequence that can only result
in one thing.’

‘And what pray
is that?’ I tried to be even toned, or nonchalant perhaps.

‘He will want
to go back.’ Janey was staring into my eyes, seriously regarding
me. It was like a deep well; ‘he will think that he can change the
outcome. He will think that he, of all people can find the source
of the anomaly and stop it from happening. He thinks he can save
everyone, and do anything. He believes that because I am not the
other Janey; sacrificing himself will be enough. And everyone else
can go home. And that he won’t remember.’

I felt frozen
in my seat; ‘Please…. Janey….’ I whispered, ‘please don’t…’

‘I invented
this thing!’ he eyes were like bright blue fire. ‘I was the
culprit; you see it, don’t you. And all we have to do; is to undo
that moment!’

‘What moment?’
said Jules, ‘this is not as easy as all that.’

‘Easy?’ Janey’s
voice grew stronger, ‘Do you think this; is easy?! To be surrounded
by people you have never met who know so much about you.’

‘They don’t.
They really don’t…’ I said, but my voice had no real impact, and
Janey was ignoring me.

‘Yes. The way
is simple. We use a new modulator that Jules can construct for us,
to stop me from finding the equations and finding the way to do
this.’