I was interested to learn of scientific expeditions from Old to New Earth, mainly to search for any surviving humans on remote islands. So far they had found a few groups, in places such as Tristan da Cunha and Pitcairn Island. Some wildlife researchers had also visited, one group triumphantly returning to Old Earth with a breeding population of dodos to restock Mauritius, and other such recoveries from extinction were planned.
One unexpected development made me wonder even more who I was, and what I was becoming. At the end of one session with my genealogical scientists they were prodding me to focus as closely as possible on a particular memory, to try to describe more accurately something – person or animal – I had only caught a brief glimpse of. I riffled through the index of worlds in my mind, selected the right one and concentrated all of my attention on it. Oddly, as I focused more closely my viewpoint seemed to change and, as I watched, a couple of saurian-like animals wandered past, far closer than I had seen them before. I snapped back into the present, and caught the scientists staring at me, their colours and mental states indicating their shock.
‘What happened? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost!’ (A difficult concept, this, but my saurian was now good enough to find an equivalent.)
‘Your eyes, they just silvered over – there was no pupil visible at all!’
It was clear that they were not joking, and it dawned on me what I had done. I was no longer accessing my memory of the view, but the view itself – I could look directly into the parallel worlds without needing a slider machine.
This caused huge excitement once more and the original slider scientists ran or hopped into view as soon as they could. More tests with the headnets followed, but they only confirmed what they had already surmised – that my mental state when viewing the parallel worlds showed the same baffling pattern as when I went through the slider machine. Eventually they went away, theorising and debating. As far as I was concerned my new ability was an interesting party trick, but I didn’t initially see much practical use for it.
Spring had now turned into summer, and to get away from the persistent attentions of the world genealogists (who had come to regard me as an inexhaustible data source) I spent many long days exploring ever further from the settlement, sometimes disappearing by myself for several days at a time. I felt myself slowing, taking the saurian long view, my human impatience gradually dissipating. The interlinked network of marshes and lakes was ideal to lose myself in both physically and mentally, my focus on encompassing in my mind as much of the teeming life as I could. I was returning to the settlement from such a day out when:
‘Matt! Come quickly – the saurians are here on New Earth – they are killing the settlers!’
The message from Luke ran through me like an electric shock, shattering my mood.
‘How, Luke – what happened?’
There was only silence. I sent an urgent message to my friends and the Convenor, an equally urgent call to the slider ship – never far away – to rendezvous as quickly as possible, and ran to the settlement and into my room. The case of the P.A.W. was dusty with disuse. I pulled out the gun; one of the convenient saurian harnesses took the magazines and the spare ammunition. As I left the dwelling I saw Secundo and Tertia hopping rapidly towards me – Primo was off visiting relatives somewhere. All of the time I was trying to contact Luke, with no success. I turned to the saurians in exasperation. ‘How could they do this? It’s supposed to be impossible!’
‘I don’t know,’ Secundo responded, ‘but I can’t reach the technician responsible for the African transfer machine – she’s not responding.’
The flight to Africa dragged interminably, but at last we saw the network of beam power receiver aerials in the distance. They cast long shadows in the evening light. We flew past them to where the cabin stood by the transfer machine. In the cabin, we found the technician – she appeared to be in deep shock, almost catatonic. Tertia stayed with her, focusing her healing skills with urgent intensity, while Secundo examined the machine.
‘It’s been reset – I’ll get a tech from the ship.’
The ship’s slider technician confirmed that it had indeed been reset, and was now providing a direct link between New Earth and S2. No activity was visible on the screens at either end. I focused my mind to see New Earth directly, and turned to look around. An embryonic town centre had grown up around the slider hole, which now emerged in the middle of the main square. The buildings were intact, but there was no sign of life, except for a man sitting on the ground a short distance away, his head in his hands. There were what looked like some collections of rags dotted about, then my spine chilled as I realised that they were bodies.
The tech shut down the transfer machine and began to reset it. I called to the ship to lower its own slider machine; it was already powering up as it reached the ground. Secundo and I stepped in, waited for the hole to appear, then stepped forwards into the town square. The smell of death was ripe in the air; the bodies had been lying for over a day in the broiling sun. I scanned the area, senses at maximum alert, and detected a large mass of people some distance away, their minds radiating panic and despair. The characteristic mental signature of saurians was mixed in with them. Apart from that, there was no-one alive but the man in the square. I lowered the P.A.W. and ran over to him. In my agitation I shouted. ‘What’s happened? Where’s Luke?’
He looked up at me, his eyes red from many tears, his mind numbed by shock. I recognised one of the organisers of the transfer, an African who worked closely with Luke. ‘They came. The kangasaurs. Out of the hole. Dozens of them, hundreds of them. With weapons. They killed people here. They took Luke away, somewhere. Then they left the town, went out to the countryside. They left me here with a message for you. They said to tell you that Luke is with the Representative. That the Representative wants to talk with you.’ He put his head down again and I felt him withdraw into his own mind, a world of sorrow.
I stood up and began to scan more intensely than before, holding Luke’s mental pattern in my consciousness. A feeble response came, some distance away, off to one side of the main body of people I had detected before. I turned to Secundo and asked him to stay in the ship’s slider cabin, to shut down the hole to avoid any risk of the S2 soldiers gaining access and to monitor what was happening on the viewscreen, ready to open the hole to let me back in. I helped him through the hole again, watched as it flicked out of existence, then turned and began a steady jog towards my brother.
Part way there I received a message from Tertia. ‘I have managed to get through to the technician. The Representative used our mental comms system to target her. He started by insinuating nightmares of torture and death into the tech’s mind, for night after night. When the tech was awake one day he showed her saurians from S2, who the Representative said were related to her by common ancestry. They were then tortured to death – the nightmares came true. The Representative told her that if she told anyone of this, more of her relatives would die, and that the only way to stop this was to reprogramme the transfer machine. So she did it. She is in a very bad way, and will need lots of treatment and recovery time.’
The Representative. Again. I felt my pace increasing as anger started to replace my other emotions, a burning need to reach the vicious saurian. He was using Luke as bait, to get at me. He had always hated me, and I had provided plenty of reasons for that hatred to increase. Well, that could cut both ways. I raced through the newly tilled fields, drawn like a lodestone to Luke’s signal.