‘Len. Where are you?’ His personal comm-link was down. His car’s comm was also off line.
She approached Jannson. ‘I’m worried about Dr Heigener; he was supposed to be meeting me here almost an hour ago.’
‘I’ll check the police monitoring grid.’ As the institute’s security officer Jannson had direct access to all surveillance monitoring systems. ‘He seems to be on his way,’ he said matter-of-factly, making Raiya feel as if her concerns were unfounded.
She checked her comm once again, and to assuage her worry he answered. ‘Hi, Raiya. Sorry for the delay. Had a few problems with the car. I’ll be over there in about ten minutes.’
She rather sheepishly thanked Jannson for his assistance and made back for her office.
Leonard Heigener lowered his bulky frame in the leatherette chair opposite. Raiya noticed he had put on weight since the last time she saw him in person; the holo image never seemed to give an entirely accurate representation of someone’s size, despite what the system’s manufacturer would claim. Maybe it was something to do with his presence in reality. The thought that it made her look larger was not reassuring brought a brief warm feeling.
Leonard had an earnest look about him. ‘Sorry about my tardiness.’ He smiled ‘The darndest thing: the car’s nav system went totally skew. Wasn’t paying attention at first and it took me two hundred ks off course.’
‘No need to apologise, Len. I’m not fitting you in between clients. To be honest, I’m glad I’ve cancelled the rest of today’s sessions; not really in the mood for dealing with their neurosis.’
‘If I was booked in to see you today I’d be most disappointed, it would be the highlight of my week.’
‘Yes, well some of them are just very lonely.’
‘We all get lonely, Raiya.’ She wondered where this conversation might go.
‘As much as I appreciate your company, Len, you know I only really need you here for your expertise.’
‘Of course.’ He chuckled briefly. ‘You can take the shrink out of the institute, but---’
‘---You can’t take the institute out of the shrink. Sure. Sometimes it is difficult to switch off from that mode. But as one of the best in the field, tell me: what would you do with the Lyndau file if you knew it was of interest to – shall we say – a higher authority?’
He hunched forward. ‘What kind of higher authority would that be?’
‘That’s just it. I don’t know. He wouldn’t say. Except he claimed to be from some sort of security agency – the Western Alliance Security Directorate.’
‘Never heard of them. Did you ask for ID?’
‘To my shame, no. No one has ever had such an effect; I’ve found sociopaths to be less intimidating than this man.’
‘You’re even frightening me, now.’
‘Seriously, I couldn’t think of anyone I’d least like to meet on a dark night – even in the safety of the car park.’
‘He must be good!’
‘So it seemed. I had no choice in handing over the file.’
‘Then I’m in danger?’
‘Quite possibly.’
‘But I haven’t been contacted.’
‘Maybe they don’t know you have a copy since you’re not heading the case study.’
‘Okay, so you think I’d be safer if I destroyed it? But I’m guessing you’ve kept a copy, right?’
‘He is – was – a fascinating man, the archetypal mad genius.’
‘Archetypal? A bit of a generalisation for you, Raiya.’
‘Yes I did read the media reports, tried not to let them colour my analysis. My point is: what is there about the work of this man that is viewed as a threat to national security ... or be of any special interest?’
‘You’ve read the full accounts?’
‘Most of them.’
‘Well, I can tell you it gets pretty bizarre,’ said Heigener. ‘I’m talking time travel, meetings with “ghosts” – that is: having encounters with dead people and discussing some quite specific events and theories. He may have been mad, but he had one heck of an imagination.’
‘But someone is taking this dead man deadly seriously.’
‘He claimed he was chosen – a conduit for an ancient civilization to communicate with “earthlings”. This ancient race has a great power to control time. He saw himself as having opened a kind of pandora’s box, unleashing unimaginable forces, dangerous forces.’
‘So you agree that he was highly delusional?’
Leonard shifted uncomfortably. ‘It’s an obvious analysis; difficult to argue against.’
‘I need a coffee. How about you?’
*
Eludi-4
In the twenty-percent higher gravity, at about eight hundred metres altitude, Scott found himself short of breath. Humidity had increased, making the filter mask feel even more oppressive than usual. The sun nevertheless shone brightly, glancing off a crashing waterfall about a hundred metres above them, giving the illuminated mist an ethereal quality.
They climbed the south side, a gradient which was just about possible to ascend on foot.
Josh pointed to a figure on an upper ridge. ‘What the fu....’
Scott could just discern a man in a T-shirt and shorts scrambling up the slope towards the waterfall. ‘Who?’
‘Well, it can’t be the pilot or Lichman – surely?’
‘A native?’
‘A native white man on a planet two thousand, three hundred light years from Earth. Yeah, makes sense.’
The man was getting very close to the waterfall; moving swiftly, almost seeming to glide over the ragged rock face, as if in lunar g.
‘We can’t both be hallucinating.’
‘Let’s find out, then.’
They both tried to run, but neither could move in any more than stuttering steps over the ruts and gullies. They just got near enough to the man to see him launch himself over the water, to then disappear into the torrent.
‘He’ll never survive that,’ commented Josh. ‘It’s suicide; that water’s never deep enough.’
‘No way!’ Scott noticed the man emerge at the bottom of what must’ve been at least a fifty metre drop, and then leap about excitedly like a child who had just descended a water slide.
Scott hadn’t noticed Josh hurtling towards the exuberant man. A determination to confront a hallucination. He followed, trying not care too much that he’d slip.
Josh was desperately scrambling across a ledge to get to the man who was still revelling in the water. Only, he slipped, falling about two metres. Scott diverted his trajectory down toward Josh. At first glance Josh seemed to have only superficial injuries.
‘Don’t stop for me. Get to him,’ Josh demanded.
Scott looked up to the waterfall’s base. The man was now striding towards the edge of the base, a sheer ragged drop before him. Scott got to within a few metres of the man. He called out: ‘Hey, wait up.’ The man was right at the edge now. Scott tried to get across, but he lost the balance between speed and caution, losing his footing, sliding down to a lower ledge.
As he tried to climb to his previous level he glanced across to see the man had reached the very edge. ‘Wait for me!’ he shouted.
‘Forget it,’ the man said. ‘You will anyway. You’ll forget it all. It will all be taken away.’
‘What do you mean?’ Scott called. ‘Why?’
‘Because you were never supposed to be here. None of you.’ He then leapt off the edge without a sound, his fall obscured by a rocky outcrop.
Scott backtracked towards Josh who’d now got to his feet, heading in his direction, hobbling along the ridge at a desperate pace.
‘What happened?’ Josh said, almost shouting from about ten metres away. ‘Did you get a picture?’ It was the obvious thing he should have done, but somehow in the excitement he’d entirely forgot.
‘He jumped off the edge. I couldn’t see any cable, so I’m guessing he’s dead.’
Josh caught up with him. ‘How will we ever explain that? It’s insane!’
‘The doctor would say we were both hallucinating due to oxygen deprivation.’
‘And it would be difficult to argue with him on that.’ Josh then nodded as if to confirm to himself an idea. ‘There’s only one thing for it. We look for a body.’
Scott grimaced at him. ‘Now I would say you are insane. Even getting down the shallow slope will be a challenge for you now.’
Josh looked deadly serious. ‘Then you go alone. Otherwise I will go myself. I gotta know whether there really was someone. I mean, can you accept we both saw the same illusion?’
He was right: it would bug them like crazy, not being sure. ‘OK. I’ll investigate.’
He had no climbing gear; even a helmet would give him some confidence on what was looking like a sheer edge. His comm only worked intermittently; there was no way of triangulating his position. And the lower oxygen levels at this altitude made it all the more difficult to concentrate.
The ridge forked off into a narrower section, and soon he was having to use his hands to stabilise his descent towards the base of the waterfall. The rock was increasingly ragged, his foot sliding, almost slipping off the edge except for a desperate grapple on a jutting root on the higher section.
Water droplets flew into his eyes, even at the edge of this level. Below him rivulets flowed down through the jagged edge, coalescing to a stream, then to a lower ledge where it pooled and flowed down a shallow side. Scott surveyed the very bottom, following the eventual path of the stream. There was no sign of anyone. It was a sheer drop; from where the man had seemed to jump it was clear that he would at least be very seriously injured, certainly unable to walk off. Surely even the deepest part of the pool on that first ledge would not cushion his fall. It had looked like a suicide attempt. An effective one. Not even an expert free-jumper would cope on this descent, he thought.
He sat on the overhanging ledge, legs dangling down. The mist from the waterfall soaking his back. Where was the evidence that anyone else had ever been here? When Scott had passed the waterfall he’d left footprints trailing to this point; there was no avoiding it. If not for Josh as a witness he would easily be convinced that it was all merely another hallucination.
He got up and walked – as he imagined the man had done – to the very edge. Feet literally on the precipice.
If he jumped from here, he would make it – his fall unbroken – to that clear but roiling pool. He tried to remember how that man jumped. It was a lunge, just as if he were a free-jumper with a parachute, for the second or so he could be seen.
Scott surveyed around to the bottom again, just to be sure there was no body. He felt the vertigo take hold; his heart hammering, the tingle of adrenaline right to his fingertips. And he wanted to jump, if only to know how it felt.
He thought he heard a whisper in his right ear. ‘Do it. You can do it.’
‘I can do it,’ he confirmed.
Then he did, and it felt incredible. For perhaps a second and a half he felt so alive, no thought of death.
And then...
‘Doctor Lichman?’
‘Glad to see you’re back to the land of the living.’ The doctor was peering down at Scott, who was back in the shelter in his room.
‘But I jumped.’ Scott was surprised at not feeling injured in any way.
‘Jumped?’ Lichman enquired.
‘Off the mountain.’ It sounded absurd now, in this situation.
‘You collapsed, whilst climbing, about halfway up. CO2 intoxication. Josh had to lug you back. You were drifting in and out of consciousness ... but probably don’t remember that.’
‘No, we got near the top.’ The filter mask had been double checked, he was sure.
‘Scott, you hadn’t properly recovered from your episode. If I’d known you were going gallivanting up that mountain I wouldn’t have allowed it.’
‘Where’s Josh?’
‘He’s sleeping now. Exhausted as you can imagine.’
***