Kendrick began to snigger. 'Yeah? So what would they do with that?'
'The Bright were designed to be curious. Every answer they could possibly desire is there at the end of time, in the Omega. So why not go straight to the source?'
'This is too much, Buddy. I don't know how to take it in. Do you know how ludicrous this sounds? A worm- hole? What kind of wormhole?'
'There's strong evidence that the Bright have figured out a way to access zero-point energy. You know what that is, right?'
'Sure, it's getting something out of nothing, energy out of empty space.' Physicists had long theorized that even within cold, empty vacuum vast unbounded energy resources existed on the quantum scale, powering the constant generation of short-lived virtual particles in a seething, invisible maelstrom of creation. Finding a way to tap directly into those resources was an objective that physicists had been hunting for decades.
'Well, you'd need nearly infinite energy to keep a wormhole indefinitely open, in order to cause the kind of fluctuations that have been observed up there. It's hardly surprising that Los Muertos are so concerned about preventing us getting to the Archimedes. If they could get their hands on energy resources like that they could hold the whole world to ransom – if they wanted. They don't want any of us in the way.'
A radiant smile spread across Buddy's features, and Kendrick was reminded of a supplicant throwing down his crutches at the feet of a healing saint. 'But Los Muertos we can deal with. What matters is that the Bright have invited us to go along with them. To them, we're all the same: you, me and anyone else who survived Ward Seventeen.'
Kendrick returned to Edinburgh and tried again to contact Caroline, without success. In the end he let himself into her flat a second time – and found it wrecked.
Either someone had searched it messily or there'd been a struggle there. He sat in Caroline's living room, with the moonlight streaming through her window-screen, painting pale stripes across broken furniture and a dent in one wall where it looked as though a body had impacted hard. He tried to remember that Caroline was the kind of woman who knew how to look after herself. For an hour or so Kendrick sat on her couch and stared numbly at the wreckage.
In the end he called Buddy and told him what he'd found.
'Shit.' Then a long-drawn-out silence. 'I'm sorry, Kendrick. Do you need me there?'
'No, I don't know if that would make any difference. I'm going to ask some questions, see what I can find out.'
'Look, I can get over there in a couple of hours-'
'It's fine.'
'You're going to look for her, aren't you?'
'I'll let you know how it goes. So stay in touch.'
'Yeah, sure. Be careful. Be very careful.'
Kendrick broke the connection and stared around Caroline's ruined apartment, lost in thought.
Apart from himself, who would have known where Caroline lived? Only Malky, unless she had made new friends over the past year. An image of Malky's dead eyes flashed through his thoughts.
It was hard to accept what Buddy had told him about the Archimedes, but what he'd said about zero-point energy made some sense of both Draeger's and Los Muertos' actions. Zero-point energy was a prize with dangerously high stakes, and the Labrats were apparently caught right in the middle.
And then there was Hardenbrooke, who was clearly playing his own extremely dangerous game, setting each party off against the other – and presumably being paid by both without the other realizing.
Hardenbrooke? Kendrick stared into the distance, knowing that he had only one real option left. If there was even the slightest chance that the medic had been involved with or knew something about Caroline's disappearance, Kendrick had to find him.
22 October 2096 Edinburgh
'Some mess, eh, Kendrick?' McCowan's ghost sat beside him in the rain.
'Tell me I'm not crazy,' Kendrick replied. 'Tell me if any of this is real.'
'Don't talk shite.'
Kendrick had only gradually become aware of McCowan sitting beside him on the park bench. In Caroline's flat he'd felt another wave of nausea wash through him so he had made his way outside, desperately wanting to breathe fresh air and find somewhere to wait until the feeling of disorientation passed. He'd stopped at a stretch of green running parallel to the road into Leith when the nausea had become particularly bad.
'Then tell me something useful. Like how to find Caroline.' As Kendrick spoke, the world around them began to move very slowly, as if caught in some viscous liquid. A dog galloped across a street nearby in languid slow motion.
'I can stretch out our subjective time together this way,' McCowan told him. 'Gives us longer to talk. But I can't help you with Caroline, Kendrick. I'm sorry.'
'Why can't you?'
'Look, out of all the others who survived Ward Seventeen, you're the only one I'm still in contact with. So, I don't know anything about what's happened to Caroline. You'll have to find that out for yourself.'
'But why are you only in contact with me?'
'Look, the treatments you received from Hardenbrooke had the unexpected side effect of blocking the signal coming from Robert… coming from the Archimedes.'
'What the hell?' Kendrick squinted at him. 'Robert on the Archimedes?'
'Shut up and bear with me. Hardenbrooke got your augments under control, and that had the added side effect of blocking Robert – mostly. So you only got snatches, little bits of what Buddy and the rest received. At the same time, Robert was blocking me, preventing me from communicating with you, or indeed with any other of the Ward Seventeen Labrats.'
McCowan held up one finger. 'Except Hardenbrooke's treatments, by blocking Robert, somehow gave me the opportunity at least to reach you, if nobody else. It means that I can speak to you, but only you, for just seconds at a time.'
'But why wouldn't Robert want you contacting me?'
McCowan looked at him sharply. 'He's insane – or don't you remember what happened between the two of you? It's hardly surprising that he bears you no goodwill.'
'I haven't seen Robert: no dreams, visitations, whatever it is the others got.'
McCowan had a sad look on his face. 'Ken, Ken,' he said with a sigh. 'You have seen him, plenty of times. And as for where he is, well, part of him is down here, and part of him is up there on the Archimedes. You'll be seeing more of him, once your augments learn to fully circumvent Hardenbrooke's treatments. Robert is going to have less trouble getting through to you now, which means, in turn, that it'll be harder for me to reach you.'
A signal coming from the Archimedes? Knowing that made it easier, more real, more objective. 'So why can't you just – I don't know – transmit yourself to the station or something, if that's presumably how Robert got there?'
McCowan made an exasperated sound. 'I've tried and failed every time, thanks to that son of a bitch. I can't get there on my own. And as long as Robert's the only human mind directly interfacing with the Bright I can't be that sure the wormhole to the Omega is ever going to open.'
A spasm of pain shot through Kendrick's skull and he grabbed his head, gasping at the suddenness of it. McCowan was right, though: it wasn't as bad as previously.
