Shift (4 page)

And that was another thing—tangential leaps in his thinking processes. He'd start thinking about one thing and end up God knows where, with no idea how he got there. A brain stuffed full of butterflies, all of them flapping at once.

And then Louise came back into focus; still looking at him, still waiting for an answer. How could he explain things to her without first taking her through an introduction to Higher Dimensional Theory?

"You see you've got to know the context."

And then he was away. Switching into lecture mode, recalling facts and personalities, reeling off the talk he'd given so many times before.

He told her about the search for a unified theory. How the laws of gravitation, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, relativity and possibly a few others besides had all been brought together under the umbrella of Higher Dimensional Theory.

"You see, the universe is not just the three physical dimensions that we see around us but ten—can you believe that—ten physical dimensions. Eleven if you count time. Isn't that just amazing? Here we are—barely coping with length, breadth and depth—and suddenly we've got another seven to worry about.

He was in his element now, pacing and expounding, arms windmilling. Like a child let loose in a toy factory, flitting from one subject to the next. But with a structure this time. A practised discipline that held the speech together. Taking Louise through the labyrinthine twists and turns of a complex subject. Passing on his excitement as only a true enthusiast can.

He talked of acupuncture, he talked of dowsing. He explained how they accessed the hidden—the higher—dimensional component that all matter was composed of. How so much material was hidden from the five physical senses. How telepathy, near death experiences—maybe even ghosts someday—could be explained by reference to HDT. Senses and skills that exploited the hidden universe.

"And just think of the implications for space travel. How for years we've only considered the three axes of movement—up, down, left, right, forward and back. But in eleven dimensions we've got another seven. Astounding, isn't it. Unfathomable! How can we, trapped inside our three dimensional thought, conceive of what these other seven axes look like?"

But Nick Stubbs could. Tracing pictures inside Louise's imagination, he drew her deeper and deeper into his strange world.

"Imagine a two dimensional universe. Like a picture on a piece of paper, it has no depth. Imagine this world as a blank piece of paper inhabited by little stick men—just like a cartoon. The stick men can move left and right and up and down across the page but they can't move forward and back—that's the third dimension that doesn't exist for them. They would have no concept whatsoever of this third dimension, the same as we have no concept of our extra seven."

He hoped she could see it. The imaginary paper world he held fluttering before her. And then, with a flourish, he screwed it up into a tight little ball.

"You see, the universe is no more flat than the Earth."

He stared at his creation, breathing belief into it. A tiny paper ball universe balanced on an outstretched palm of thought.

"We still have our piece of paper and stick men who can travel only on the surface but now we have something else, don't we? With our three dimensional knowledge we can see that many points on the paper have been moved closer together. Not for the stick men, because they'd still have to walk along the surface of the paper, but if they had a three dimensional capability they could reduce the distance dramatically and travel directly through the ball. That was the driving force behind SHIFT, to reduce the vast inter-stellar distances that we've measured in three dimensions by utilising some or all of the other seven. Forget all that 'no one can travel faster than the speed of light' crap and fly to the stars in a matter of minutes!"

He paused, breathing hard.

"Now, of course, not everyone believed that was possible. For years it was thought these extra dimensions had to be minute—rolled up upon themselves, no bigger than an atom. They had to be or else we'd see them, right?"

He waited for Louise to nod. And then shot her down as he'd done to a thousand other students.

"Like we can see infra-red or ultra-violet?" He shook his head. "We're adapted to sense a fraction of what's out there. The fraction we need to get by and that's it. I can't sense a magnetic field but give me the right machine and I can show it to you. Same goes for the higher dimensions. Those cameras over there. They're calibrated to display the higher dimensional energy spectrum.

"And guess what . . . some of those higher dimensions are as infinite as our physical three."

Another pause for effect, another sweep of his arms.

"What followed was one of those golden eras of scientific discovery when the interests of politicians, big business and science all coincided so that everyone could pull together and make the thing work. You know—national pride, promises of new industries, new markets, undying fame. All other areas of research put on hold.

"Which is why we now know more about travel in the higher dimensions than any other aspect of HDT. Take my research—we know little more about the mind today than we did fifty years ago. There are still eminent doctors who deny the existence of HDT or its relevance to psychology—your Doctor Ziegler, for one. If we'd had the same resources put into our research as SHIFT it might have been different. But I'm not complaining—far from it. As I said, most of my machinery comes from SHIFT or SHIFT-related research. These higher dimensional imagers and translators—all SHIFT based technology."

He patted one again, noticed a speck of dust and brushed it away. Then he was off again. Talking of the mind and its mysterious higher dimensional component.

"You see, most of the body's higher dimensional matter is located in the area of the brain. What we see—the visible part—is but a small component of the whole. It's like . . ." He searched for a suitable analogy, his eyes flashing and flickering. "A mushroom! Just like a mushroom. You have the fruiting body above ground—the visible component—and a vast array of tendrils and God knows what else spreading and permeating about underground—the unseen component, so easy to overlook but absolutely essential to the understanding of the organism.

"Which brings us to John Bruce. He was supposed to be fully shielded during his journey. All his bits picked up and brought back but what if the shielding was flawed and not all of him came back. What then?"

"Wouldn't he die?" asked Louise.

"Depends which bits he lost. My profession used to advocate lobotomies—you know, surgically removing bits of the brain. They survived. Who's to say you couldn't lose some higher dimensional matter and survive—quite likely really. The only problem with that theory is that SHIFT were so thorough, I can't believe they wouldn't have picked up an anomaly like that when comparing the before and after scans. Otherwise—nice theory."

"Are you saying that John Bruce might have lost a part of his mind during the voyage and somehow that lost part has surfaced within Peter Pendennis?"

"Was I saying that?" He thought for a while, trying to remember. Sometimes his brain moved so quickly he lost touch with his thoughts once he'd committed them to speech. Or so he liked to think. He always fancied himself as something special, something exceptional. Others were less charitable and said he talked so much drivel it was no wonder his memory was too embarrassed to store it all.

"It's one possibility," he said, regaining his thread. "One of many, I should think. The voyage might have affected John's higher dimensional abilities—accentuated his telepathic skills, for example. Pendennis might be a receptive, a medium, who can pick up telepathic messages. Or the shift through the dimensions might have ripped at John's mental fabric—maybe dislodged a bubble of memory so strong that it could exist independent of its owner. Who knows?"

And what fun it would be to find out. He could see months of research opening out before him, maybe even years, maybe even a new branch of science.

"And if I could get hold of John Bruce's brain scans, there might be something the SHIFT team overlooked."

"I don't remember hearing about any other SHIFT missions after John's. Couldn't that be proof that something went wrong?"

"What?" He was half in the room, half racing into the future. "Oh, that. No, that was down to navigation problems. The craft was supposed to slip into the higher dimensions and then return. A short journey just to prove that flight was possible. Trouble was it came back fifty miles away from where it was supposed to. Spectacular sight mind you—one second it was there, hanging in space, a couple of thousand miles above the Earth, then..." He clicked his fingers. "It winked out of existence and reappeared fifty miles to the left."

"So it did go wrong?"

"After a fashion. They knew about the navigation error long before John got anywhere near the craft. But it wasn't seen as a problem. You see, they experienced the same magnitude of deflection during the unmanned flights. It was predictable. They didn't know where he was going to reappear but they knew it would be about fifty miles from the start point. And it wasn't as though he was going anywhere. Just nipping into the void and back."

"Seems one hell of a risk to me."

"Ah, but you didn't have half of Washington breathing down your neck. SHIFT could have been cancelled if there were any more delays."

"Still seems a crazy way to run a project."

"It's a crazy world. Anyway, SHIFT's on hold now until they sort the navigation problem out. No point venturing to the stars if you can't find your way back, is there?" He paused, thinking. Then smiled. "I don't know though. It does have that certain appeal, doesn't it?"

"So SHIFT was cancelled after all?"

"No, not cancelled—put on hold. The funds are still there. If and when they crack the navigation problem"

"So, what do we do?"

He didn't answer immediately. He stood, staring vacantly out the window, mulling over the possibilities. What was the best plan of action? Rush off to the States and try to persuade John Bruce to submit to a brain scan? What chance was there of that? And what if the whole thing was a fake? An opportunist telepath reading Louise's mind and regurgitating events for . . . for what? Attention? Prestige? Some strange twisted plan that might never be fully understood?

"Tell you what, I'll get in touch with SHIFT and, in the meantime, let's have a look at Mister Pendennis before Ziegler changes his mind."

"Do I have to be there?"

"Definitely. If there is a telepathic link between the two of you, end of story. I can calibrate the imagers to pick up even the weakest telepathic bond so there'll be no chance of him faking anything."

"And if there is no link?"

"That, Ms. Callander, is when it starts to get interesting."

Nick tossed his car key onto the dining room table and switched on the HV. It was all he could think about on the drive over. Go home, call up every John Bruce holocast you can find and see if there's a change.

One that nobody had noticed.

It would have to be something subtle. Maybe a slight loss of motor skills—was that why he'd left NASA? Or gaps in his memory, or . . .

The HV prompt light came on. All he needed now was the remote which, as usual, was hiding—probably buried beneath last night's Indian take-away. Or was that the night before's?

Someday he really had to find the trigger to his tidy gene.

He found the remote, wiped off the red sauce and switched to voice input.

"John Bruce," he said and selected 'news.'

A news anchor materialised in the corner of the room—the image, half life-size and floating two feet off the ground. She smiled at Nick and spoke in a soft southern drawl.

"John Bruce will be leaving the campaign trail today to attend a SHIFT reunion in Florida. The thirty-one year-old former spaceman is currently trailing third in the polls in New Hampshire but . . ."

Nick froze the image and asked for a list of every John Bruce appearance, with titles and dates. The news anchor disappeared to be replaced by columns of text scrolling through the air. Nick selected a handful either side of the launch date and flipped between them. Did Bruce show a discernible change?

He walked around each image, flipping between the slightly nervous but always smiling spaceman and the relieved hero. All the interviews looked staged and undoubtedly were. NASA was fixated on image, paying as much attention to public perception as they did to their programs. John Bruce would have been coached from day one.

Nick extended the search into entertainment, documentaries and beyond. There had to be some candid shots surely, some unguarded moment away from his NASA minders?

Text scrolled and faded. Images flashed. There were a few extended interviews, some passing appearances on live documentaries. But Bruce always appeared guarded. Impeccably polite, quick to smile, friendly . . . but he never really opened up.

Even when he talked about his religious experience . . . 

Nick felt like slapping himself. How could he have forgotten! John Bruce had one of those religious born-again experiences during the SHIFT flight.

He froze the image. "New search. John Bruce. Born again."

He tapped at the remote, extended the search into the God channels. A new list appeared. Shorter. He selected the first. No good. The second . . . the third.

John Bruce materialised in front of him. He was sitting in a chair, on a stage somewhere, being interviewed. He looked dumbstruck—eyes wide open, mouth slightly parted.

"It was incredible," began Bruce, his voice slow and wavering slightly. "I saw this white light, brighter than anything you can ever imagine."

The holocameras zoomed in on his face, ballooning John Bruce's head to twice normal size. Nick could see the spaceman's eyes tearing up; the slow bemused shake of his giant head, the faraway look.

"And suddenly I felt this rush. So much joy, so much peace. It was like I was bathed in light. All my sins, all my worries being washed away. It was then that I knew I wasn't alone in the Pegasus. God was with me."