Solaris Rising (39 page)

I turn to June 5
^th
. Sure enough, there’s Parkhurst. Nothing about his entry stands out, but the Librarian wouldn’t be stupid enough to circle and highlight his next victim. I spend some time reading the details for the days I have not yet lived through after June 5
^th
. There’s not much point in looking at days before that – I already know they contain no other victims. Frustratingly, I don’t see any candidates. I’m looking for people who die alone, but there’s nobody. Nobody until the 12
^th
, anyway. I spot one likely candidate, details inked onto the right-hand page in perfect handwriting. With a sinking feeling, I realize that there’s really only one potential victim before I die.

Me.

“What the hell do you want?”

My boss doesn’t sound happy. It’s late now, 10:30pm. Mobile phone held to my ear, I’m crouched in a bathroom on the third floor of the Archive, hoping that nobody will hear me. I don’t want to whisper because that may tip off my boss that I’m somewhere I shouldn’t be. I mumble something about my kid being asleep and talk as loudly as I dare.

“Chief, listen to me. I think I can catch Parkhurst’s killer.”

“Jeez, are you still on this? We never catch him! Let it go.”

“Sir, I don’t have long to live, linearly speaking. Just indulge me.”

There’s a long suffering sigh on the other end of the line. “Fine, what do you want to do?”

“On the 12
^th
of June, at the time that I die, I want a dozen APP officers watching me, in hiding.”

“Uh uh, Carter. You die alone. I saw your pamphlet. Not even the APP can change that.”

“I’m not asking you to change anything about how I die. I just want our people there in case… in case I’m the next victim.”

“You think the killer would dare attack an APP?”

“Why should he care what my job is? All he cares about is that I die alone, early in the morning, in an exposed location. Doesn’t matter if I’m APP, he knows we won’t break the rules even for one of our own.”

“It’s out of the question, Carter. I’m sorry.”

He hangs up. I sit with my back against the tiled wall beside a row of sinks, head in my hands, wondering what the hell I’m going to do. And then I know.

Sunday June 11
^th
2017

According to my pamphlet, I’ll be walking through Brunswick Square early on the morning of the 12
^th
. 3am to be exact. It’s nearly 3am now, but I’m here a day early. On the evening of the 10
^th
, Laura had asked me why I set my alarm so early for the next day. I told her that the day before I die, I want to walk through the streets of Brighton and especially around the place where I’ll die. I tell her it’s my period of mourning for my own life. She doesn’t understand but she doesn’t argue.

So here I am. It’s cold, colder than it should be in summer. I wonder if global warming is to blame – then I realize that I’ve never actually asked anyone who lives longer than I do if global warming turns out to be real or not. I make a mental note to do so before I reach the 12
^th
and I’ve used up all my days. In fact, there’s an awful lot of stuff about the future I’ve never asked anybody.

I sit down on a bench and watch a taxi drive around the perimeter of the square and exit onto Brunswick Terrace.

Hands grab me.

I struggle, fighting back as my attacker pulls me over the back of the bench. I land hard on the grass, knocking the wind out of my lungs. He’s wearing a hood – I grasp at it to try and pull it free. A knife swings towards my gut but I twist out of its way, holding his arm and trying to wrest the weapon free. We roll over and over on the grass, both of us struggling to gain the upper hand.

Suddenly he is pulled off me. Strong hands lift me to my feet.

APP officers. Three of them are holding the struggling perp.

Haggerty takes off the hood.

The Chief Librarian.

“Got you.”

He spits at Haggerty. “You’re breaking the rules!” He cries. “You can’t all be here at the time of his death.”

I chuckle. “It isn’t the time of my death,” I say. “You’re a day early.”

He stares at me now, no longer struggling. “What?”

“It’s not Monday, it’s still Sunday. I tore a page out of your ledger, the left hand page for June 12
^th
. I made the entries on the right-hand page for the 12
^th
look like they occur on June 11
^th
.”

“What? When?”

“I broke into the Archive several days ago and found out I’d be your next victim, so I made you think I’d die tonight instead of tomorrow. That way all my friends here could accompany me without breaking any rules. Well, no major ones anyway. Barry here is supposed to be trying for a baby. How’s that going, Barry?”

“It’ll happen,” says Barry, twisting the Librarian’s arm a little higher behind his back. “I doubt being here this morning will change that.”

“So there you go, Mr Chief Librarian. No harm done to the precious timelines. Although what catching you will do to history, I’ve no idea. Maybe the universe will explode.”

“You have to let me go! I’m not supposed to be caught!”

“Nope, but in special circumstances, APP Officers are authorized to deviate from established history to serve the public interest. I don’t know how many people you were going to kill after tonight, but I reckon if those people die the way they’re supposed to it’ll more than balance any damage done by throwing your sorry arse behind bars.”

Haggerty steps forward. “Chief Librarian Thomas Hague, you are under arrest for gross-divergence from the established time line, at least three counts of murder and for assaulting an APP officer. You have the right to remain silent but anything you say today or at any time in the future may be used in court against you. Take him to the station, lads.”

Cursing and spitting, the Librarian is dragged away, leaving Haggerty and me alone.

“Fuck me!” says Haggerty. “You did it.”

Monday June 12
^th
2017

I sit alone on the same bench I sat on yesterday – well not yesterday for me, but yesterday as the world turns – in Brunswick Square. It is warmer tonight, but a gentle breeze flows from the waterfront and cools the air. I remember very clearly the arrest of the Chief Librarian in this very spot yesterday. I feel absolutely fine, even though my time is nearly up. I will die alone and in the future a man called David will be called daddy by my son. Catching the Librarian has proved that the future can be changed – the media woke up to that revelation in a big way – but there’s no escaping the aneurism that will take my life. I spent the day in hospital having more tests done, even though the law forbids a person from attempting to avert their own death. The doctors are less bothered by the rules these days. Things have changed, for everyone. They haven’t all changed at the same rate, on the same days. It’s been a gradual thing, but in the days I’ve lived since Sunday, I’ve noticed. Every day since then I’ve spent either in the hospital trying to find a way to cheat death, or with Laura and Jason. I’ve told them everything, I’ve tried to put David out of my mind, and I’ve managed to enjoy what little time I had left with my son.

Ultimately the doctors couldn’t help. They couldn’t do anything about the problem with my brain. It was worth a shot though.

“I hear you’ve been changing history again.”

It’s Haggerty. He shuffles over and sits down on the bench next to me, wheezing slightly. I can’t help but smile.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I say.

“Nobody should die alone.”

“What’s it like now? The future I mean?”

“Well you must have seen some of it in the past. It’s uncertain, weird. I don’t remember many details, too many things changing. I only remember the linear-past for certain. I suppose that’s how it always used to be. Makes life more interesting, that’s for damn sure. Nobody bothers with the pamphlets any more. The Archives have all been shut down. The Chief Librarian gets life, I know that for sure. Apparently he killed twenty people before the Slip. Afterwards he stopped for a while but then worked out a way he could carry on. An addiction, the psychiatrists call it. Fucking psycho if you ask me. We have to be careful that when he lives days before he got caught, he doesn’t try to kill anybody again. He may be the first person to be retroactively arrested!”

He is quiet for a moment and then says, “I’m sorry you won’t be at the trial.”

I shrug my shoulders. “It’s okay. I’m fine with it, really. I made a difference, what else can anybody hope for?”

“’S true.”

“One thing I still want to change though…”

“Jesus, leave history alone already. What’s it done to you?”

“No seriously, one more thing.”

“What?”

“Next time you see me can you suggest we go somewhere with better coffee?”

Haggerty laughs. “Sure,” he says. “I can do that.”

“So I guess I’ll see you yestermorrow,” I tell him.

“Yestermorrow. I like that. Sure. See you then.”

We sit in silence for a full minute.

My watch starts beeping.

Then, like a light switch, my brain turns off.

DREAMING TOWERS, SILENT MANSIONS

JAINE FENN

Jaine Fenn is the author of three novels to date – her Hidden Empire series, published by Gollancz, namely:
Principles of Angels
,
Consorts of Heaven
, and
Guardians of Paradise
. “Dreaming Towers, Silent Mansions” was inspired by a dream, though not one of hers...

We’re through.

Visual matches the probe data: we’re on a wide ledge of green stone with steps going down, with structures – buildings – all around us. The air smells, uh, thick. Rich, even.

The portal’s stable but featureless from this end, just as the footage showed. It looks like a funhouse mirror hanging in mid-air. I’m going round the back now... yep, it’s identical from both sides.

Hassan is going to try throwing a small projectile back through the portal. He’s using a stone he brought from Earth. He’s going to throw it – now.

Right.

The stone bounced, as predicted. He’s picking it up. It appears unchanged.

He’s about to carry out the test on the other side of the portal. And...

Same result.

We’ll repeat this exercise with any local objects we find, in case that makes any difference.

Until then... looks like the theories were right, Control. This is a one-way trip.

Though she had reviewed the original footage more times than she cared to remember, nothing prepared Charli for the reality of being on another world. Her mind kept trying to make connections, to draw parallels. Speaking to control when they first came through, she had wanted to say “the air smells like it did when we were on honeymoon in Tahiti.” She was glad she hadn’t. An experienced explorer (if such people still existed in the 2020s), or someone with a military background, would never have come out with something so unprofessional. But then she wasn’t trained for this. None of them were.

She still had no idea what the common factor was that defined their small, disparate, group. Over six thousand volunteers had come forward when the Foundation went public with its discovery; how come only five – and why these five – were found to be capable of passing through the portal? Everyone else had been repelled before they got within a metre of it. No one claimed the five of them were the brightest and best amongst the volunteers. The only thing they had in common was that none of them had close family, but that was a prerequisite of being accepted on the volunteer program. Only the lonely, as she keeps thinking; she knew that Rory would have laughed at that, and said something like “Don’t romanticize self-selection, Charli.”

A chance to train and bond together would have made her little team (as she couldn’t help thinking of them) more comfortable with each other, but given the portal’s limited lifespan, the decision-makers had kept the ‘softer’ aspects of the mission’s preparation to a minimum.

She wondered if any of the others had noticed the scuff mark on the edge of the portal platform when they arrived. If they had, no one mentioned it.

We’ve nearly finished building the garden enclosure. The waste composter’s up and running, and Ranjit’s revised the soil requirements downwards slightly. As he says, the less mass you send now, the more time we’ve got to ask for whatever we forgot. Rainfall and temperature remain constant; Shelley says we’ve got ideal growing conditions.