Fowler glanced between them in puzzlement. ‘What are you talking about?’ he demanded.
‘I suppose it doesn’t matter now,’ said Amanda, her eyes fixed firmly on Rodriguez. ‘His brother was smuggling high-security data back home. We . . . decided to arrange an accident to neutralize him.’
‘And is that how you choose to deal with your brightest and best?’ demanded Rodriguez. ‘Better that you’d simply put a bullet in his brain than allow him to suffer this . . . this living death.’
‘He has no idea that he’s caught in a temporal field,’ Amanda insisted. ‘His subjective experience of time ensures he isn’t even aware that anything’s wrong. You could hardly call it a “living death”.’
‘Perhaps,’ Rodriguez replied grimly, ‘that is something we should leave for others to decide.’
‘Others?’ echoed Amanda.
‘My colleagues,’ Rodriguez explained. ‘I eventually told them of my suspicions last night. Then we went to the captain, who will give you more of a chance than you allowed my brother. We will select a jury, and let them decide what should be done with you.’
Amanda burst out laughing. ‘That’s absolutely ridiculous! We’re all going to be dead in a few days anyway. What difference can it possibly make?’
‘So it’s true?’ Rodriguez countered. ‘Those things sprouting everywhere from our planet
Amanda opened and closed her mouth, then turned away to stare fixedly out to sea.
Rodriguez eyed her for a moment, then turned back to Fowler with a look of satisfaction. ‘We seek closure, you see. I, for one, desire closure. I want to see you made an example of – in front of God, if no one else.’
Amanda swung back round, her face twisted in fury. ‘This is insane,’ she spat. ‘We’re not responsible for that . . . thing out there. We did everything we could to stop it.’
‘No,’ intervened Fowler, putting a restraining hand on her shoulder. ‘Listen to me, Nick. We came here ourselves because we know we share at least some responsibility for what’s happening. We’re not running away, like so many others, and you
‘Then let us find out the truth.’
Fowler now became aware they were no longer alone. He looked to one side and saw three of Rodriguez’s colleagues had joined them on the restaurant deck, in the company of two crew members who were conspicuously armed. He noted, with an unpleasant churning in his stomach, that one of the latter had a length of rope slung over one arm.
‘Wait,’ said Amanda. ‘Please, before anything else, there’s something we have to do.’
‘What?’ asked Rodriuez impatiently.
Fowler saw Amanda swallow hard. ‘We need to make a recording. I swear it won’t take long.’
Rodriguez’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.
‘Please,’ Fowler beseeched him. ‘Think of it as a last request, if you prefer.’
Rodriguez’s nostrils flared briefly, then nodded assent with a brief jerk of his head.
Fowler stepped away from the rail, and set his contacts to record and upload the proceedings to a secure server he’d long since prepared. The video would then be stored, along with a cache of other files, in half a dozen separate orbital satellites that would remain untouched by the growths.
He panned up the entire height of the original growth, looming nearby, to where it disappeared into the clouds. The memory of previously watching these same images now collided with the experience of creating them for the first time, every action and thought so thoroughly locked in place that even the desire to break free of the cycle of predetermination was, he saw now, predetermined.
He panned back down, until he had Amanda encompassed in his gaze, her pale and beautiful features marred by worry and fear of what the next few hours held. But before he could do anything more than grab a fleeting recording of her, rough hands grabbed him from behind, dragging him towards the bridge and a fate that seemed as certain as anything else that had come tumbling down from the future into the present.
TWENTY-SIX
Dorican Hotel, near the Florida Array, 8 February 2235
By the time Saul reached the Dorican, it was clear that the hotel had been caught at the centre of a riot. A fire truck had been rammed through the polished glass and plate steel of the hotel’s entrance, and what at first appeared to be bundles of rags turned out to be huddled corpses afloat on a sea of debris and torn-up carpeting.
He headed across the lobby, his stomach reduced to a tight knot of hunger and his feet a spider-web of painful blisters. He wondered if he was foolhardy to hope that Hanover might still be there, but just then he spotted the man himself sitting on a sofa at the far side of the lobby. He was facing away from Saul, towards a pair of sliding glass doors through which the Array was clearly visible in the distance.
Hanover looked up with a start as Saul approached him, glass crunching under his feet, then nodded almost as if he’d been expecting him. There was a raincoat draped across his lap, as if in readiness to go somewhere.
‘I suppose you’ve come to finish the job,’ he said, as Saul halted before him.
‘You mean kill you? Why would I do that?’
‘Good question,’ Hanover replied. ‘Because it would be pretty pointless under present circumstances, don’t you think?’
‘Why are you still here?’ Saul nodded towards the Array. ‘I’d have thought you’d have fled with all the rest of them by now.’
‘Hardly.’ Hanover laughed. ‘Who sent you? Donohue? Or did Fowler decide to get his hands dirty for once?’
Saul shook his head. ‘Neither. I think it’s fair to say I don’t work for the ASI any more.’
