Healing Gregor

The transmitter came apart in Jin's hands like a walnut.

It had been hidden in plain sight. For eleven days it had sat beneath the arm of the commander's chair, small and black and innocuous, blinking its patient red light, and in all that time no one had looked at it twice. It was a smooth, flat, lozenge-shaped thing about the size of a deck of cards. There were no seams. There was no label. When Jin finally prised the cover off with the tip of a screwdriver, a coil of fine silver wire sprang out and quivered.

"Oh, that's pretty," he murmured.

"Pretty?" said Venn.

"It's very good work." Jin turned the thing over under the light. His injured hand shook slightly, but his voice was warm with a technician's reluctant admiration. "It's a repeater. It takes a signal from the outside, from the lab, and passes it into the station's bus. Quite elegant. It's not meant to fit in a Dimension at all; it's meant to fit in a Gate. See this? This is a standard coupling. This is the same coupling Otis used for our telemetry." He frowned. "He's supposed to have installed this himself."

"Otis?"

"Under instruction. I should say under someone's instruction." Jin looked up. "It was the secondary feed. The backup monitor, the one William had the technicians add the night before the Gate. Do you remember? 'Standard safety protocol.' It's been listening to us since the first day."

"And sending," said Archie.

"And sending."

Jin laid the little coil carefully on the dais, and then, as if it were a spider, he snipped it in two with a pair of shears.

The red light went out.

A moment passed. Nobody breathed. The huge room, hung with its dark glass and its dim green lamps, seemed to settle round them. Then, from somewhere deep within the walls, a soft click rolled along the length of the station like a sigh. The lights blinked once, and steadied. The hum of the great machine, which they had all been hearing so long that they no longer heard it, dropped half a tone and grew smooth.

"There," Jin said. He sounded very tired. "That should do it."

"Is he gone?" said Zoe.

"He's deaf," said Jin. "He can't hear us. He can't send. As far as William's concerned, this Space has just gone dark." He sat back on his heels. "I'd say he's in for an unpleasant afternoon."

…

He was.

In the underground lab, beneath the mist and the pines of a New Hampshire autumn, William Cross sat at the observation console with his tablet in his lap and his hand flat on the desk. He had been sitting that way for four minutes. His face, in the bluish light of the screens, was perfectly composed. It did not change. It did not tighten. But the knuckles of the hand on the desk had gone very white.

"Signal lost," said the console, in a mild pleasant voice. "Uplink two of four. Uplink two of four. Space three: no response."

"Run diagnostics," he said.

"Diagnostics complete. Device offline. Cause: physical interruption."

He closed his eyes.

"Mr. Cross?"

It was Otis. He had come in with a clipboard under his arm and a fresh coffee, and had stopped three paces from the console with an expression of bright, anxious inquiry. He was wearing the green lab coat with the pen stains on the pocket. His hair stood up at the back. He looked, William thought, with a flicker of distaste, like a golden retriever that has just heard a car door.

"Is something the matter?"

"A minor irregularity."

"With the Space Three feed? I saw the readout. It went dark about ten minutes ago." Otis frowned. "That's not good, is it? We've got four subjects over there, and if the monitor's out—"

"It's a transient. Atmospheric noise." William opened his eyes and smiled. It was a very warm smile. "These things happen, Otis. I'll have it sorted by evening."

"Do you want me to help? I know the coupling. I put the thing in myself, you remember. If you give me an hour with the—"

"That won't be necessary."

"But I—"

"Otis."

It was not loud. It was said in a perfectly even tone. But the young man stopped as though he'd walked into a pane of glass.

"I appreciate the offer," said William, more gently. "Truly. You've been invaluable. But this is a matter for the board. For the investors." He reached out and patted Otis on the shoulder. "Go and have your coffee. Look after Dr. Ferrara. He's had a hard week."

"Okay," said Otis slowly. "Okay. If you're sure."

"I'm quite sure."

Otis hesitated. Something moved in his open freckled face, a small shadow of puzzlement, and then it passed, and he turned and went away. William watched him go.

Then he turned back to the screen and, with a delicate economy of movement, as if drawing a pistol, opened a second window.

It contained a single line.

PLAN B — INITIATE?

He looked at it for a long time.

"Not yet," he said softly. "Let's see how far they get."

…

Gregor slept for a day and a night.

They put him in the crew quarters, in a narrow bunk with a gray blanket, and sat up in shifts. He didn't wake. He lay on his side, with one big arm flung out and his scarred cheek on the pillow, and the lines in his face smoothed out as the hours passed. He breathed like a child. Once, in the small hours, Zoe, who was keeping watch, heard him murmur something in his sleep, a woman's name, perhaps, and then a second word that sounded like porch.

In the morning, he woke up hungry.

It was the first thing he said. He sat up in the bunk with his hair on end and his jacket twisted round his shoulders, and looked at the four faces gathered round him, and in a voice of grave astonishment, said: "I'd give a great deal for an egg."

There was an egg.

There were several, in fact. The hydroponics bay had a coop in the far corner, which Venn had discovered on the second day; and in it, to everyone's bewilderment, lived nine plump, indignant hens. They had been there for fifteen years. They had been fed by the station's feeders and had never once been collected. Venn had spent an entire afternoon in the coop, being pecked, and had emerged with a flushed face, a bruised wrist, and a basket.

They made an omelette.

Gregor ate it at the mess hall table, slowly, with his elbows tucked in, as though it might be taken away. He ate it with tomato and a little salt and a slice of toasted bread. He didn't speak. When the plate was empty, he put down his fork and looked at it for a long time, and then he pushed it gently away and said:

"Thank you."

"Anytime," said Venn. "I mean it. I'll bring you three hens."

"I believe you."

"I've named them."

"God help us," said Gregor, and smiled.

It was a small smile, and it came slowly, as though the muscles had forgotten the route. But it reached his eyes.

…

They told him everything.

It took the best part of the afternoon. They sat round the steel table with a pot of real tea, and told it in turn: the lab, the Gate, Luca and Matteo, the Dimensions. The throne room. The bar in the rain. Gregor listened to all of it with his chin sunk on his chest, nodding now and then, interrupting only when he needed a name to be repeated. When Zoe described Elena, translucent in the rising light of Thornkeep, he put his hand over his mouth.

"Elena Vasquez," he said. "She had a laugh like a seagull. She taught me to play gin rummy."

"She remembered you."

"Did she?"

"She said you were a Navy man. Broad. Loud." Zoe smiled. "She said you couldn't be shut up."

Gregor made a sound that was half a sob and half a laugh. "I was a terror," he said. "God. I was insufferable. I talked the whole way down in the elevator. I think the technician wanted to strangle me." He wiped his eyes. "And Matteo. The boy. He was so quiet. He held on to that notebook, you know. The whole time. He had it in both hands. I said, Son, you want to relax, and he said, I'm not nervous, Mr. Halvorsen, I'm just making notes."

"Notes?" said Jin.

"Every night. Before we went in. He wrote down everything." Gregor frowned. "He was a clever boy. Cleverer than any of us. He said he didn't want to lose a minute of it."

"Did he come through here?" said Archie. "Into Space Three?"

"He did." Gregor nodded slowly. "We went in together, the three of us. We were all supposed to go through together. Instead the thing split us. Elena went one way. I went another. Matteo..." He hesitated. "I only saw him once. Briefly. In the corridor, outside the first door. He was running. He had his notebook under his arm. He stopped long enough to shout something at me."

"What?"

"I'll find a way to get us all out."

Silence.

"I thought he was mad." Gregor rubbed his face. "God forgive me. I thought, poor kid. I thought he'd lost it. And then the door closed and I was on this station, and he was gone. And I never saw him again. But I'll tell you what." His voice sank. "For fifteen years, on a bad night, when I was sure that I'd go out of my mind, I'd think of him in that corridor. Running. Shouting. Like a man with a plan."

"He had one," said Archie.

"How do you know?"

"I don't. But I know his brother." He looked at the others. "I know Luca. And I know that when a man spends fifteen years looking for his brother, he doesn't do it for a possibility."

…

Gregor opened the door at dawn.

It was set into the wall of the command deck, beside the great viewport, and none of them had noticed it before. It had been there all along, hidden by a rack of instruments. A narrow gray hatch with a wheel, like the door to a submarine. When Gregor put his hand to it, the wheel turned easily, and the hatch swung out into a dim white corridor that smelled faintly of snow.

"Space Four," he said. "Don't ask me what's in it. I've never been."

He stood by the door in his faded jacket, which he had at last buttoned right, with his hands clasped behind him in the manner of a man who has been reviewing troops all his life. He had shaved. His eyes were clear. He looked, Archie thought, ten years younger, and far more tired, as a man looks who has been carrying a pack and has finally been allowed to put it down.

"Before you go," said Gregor. "I'd like to tell you something."

"All right."

"The Voice." His face darkened. "I never told you what he said. That last night, before the trap. He talked a good while. He was in a talking mood. He wanted me to understand." He took a breath. "He gave me his name."

"William," said Archie.

"William Cross." Gregor nodded. "He said it twice, like a man giving a password. He was proud of it. He said he was an investor. That he'd put a great deal of money into this experiment, and that he intended to see a return. And he said that what he wanted wasn't any of you." He fixed Archie with a hard blue look. "It was the data. Every consciousness that passes through the Gate. Every pattern. Every scan. He's recording it all, boy. He's going to sell it."

Nobody moved.

"Who to?" said Jin, in a very small voice.

"He didn't say. A company. A corporation. Something with a bird in the name." Gregor frowned. "Corvi. Something. Corvi... Vitae."

"CorVitae."

"That's it."

Jin had gone the color of paper. "CorVitae Industries. They're... they make..." He cleared his throat. "They own half the longevity patents in the country. They've been trying to crack consciousness transfer for a decade. If William's feeding them the data—"

"He doesn't need the Gate to work," said Archie slowly. "He only needs it to run."

"Yes."

"Every minute we're in here, he's getting richer."

"Yes."

"And if we die—"

"Then it's more data," said Gregor gravely. "A man in extremis. A dying brain. It's what he's after."

Venn made a soft sound, something between a groan and a curse. Zoe took Archie's hand without a word. And Archie stood in the dim doorway of the last Guardian's station, with a ring of silent faces about him and the cold white corridor beckoning, and felt the knowledge settle on his shoulders, heavy and exact.

It was not a surprise. He had known, he thought. Some part of him had known since the second day. But hearing it made it real.

"Thank you, Commander," he said.

"Don't thank me." Gregor held out a folded sheet. "I've one more thing."

It was a scrap of notepaper, yellowed with age, creased into eighths. Archie took it. It was covered with tiny, cramped handwriting, in pencil, in a code of arrows and abbreviations that he could not read.

"Matteo gave it to me," said Gregor. "In the corridor. He pushed it into my hand and said, If anyone comes after, give them this. I never understood it. I kept it in my boot for fifteen years." A faint, wry smile. "I don't suppose I'm any wiser now. But I've a feeling it was meant for you."

Archie unfolded it.

At the top of the page, in a firmer hand than the rest, was a single line, underlined twice.

THE LOCK IS NOT THE KEY. FIND WHO HAS BEEN HOLDING THE DOOR.

He read it three times. He did not understand it. But a chill ran down his back, and a strange certainty, the kind he felt when he looked at a drawing and knew without being told where the load would fall.

He folded it carefully and put it inside his coat, against his heart.

"Take care of yourself, Commander," said Zoe, and, rising on her toes, she kissed the old man on his scarred cheek.

Gregor's face worked.

"Go on," he said gruffly. "Go on. Get out of here, the lot of you, before I embarrass myself."

They stepped through the hatch. The white took them. It smelled of snow.

Behind them, in the empty command deck, a man in a faded naval jacket stood looking out at the blue world for a long time, with a tomato in his hand.