Who the fuck is doing this? Am I doing this? It looked like I zoomed in from the outside of the whole meta-reality there, pinpointing in to this world, this city, this building right here and now, all in under a second. I’ve talked to the top brain boys and girls at the Transitionary Theory department in the Speditionary Faculty and what I saw looked like what they imagine in their heads all the time but have great difficulty explaining. But it honestly felt like I was seeing it properly, truly, for real.
I inspect my newly revealed panorama and discover that I am not alone in the palace. There are some people entering from a boat moored at the private jetty and what looks like another team bursting in through the front doors. I can even see the air movements: the draught I felt a moment ago came from the canal-jetty doors. Then that detail disappears. Two teams, six people each. They each have a team member capable of damping down the capacity to transition anywhere near them. I’m already within both volumes of affect. More personneclass="underline" there are another four people guarding the ways out of the palace, and two more in a second launch holding station in the Grand Canal just off the palace.
How did-?
I was out for nearly two hours after I performed my odd, inadvertent flit from the room with the chair and the quietly spoken man and his sticky tape. Two hours; I had no idea I had been out so long. I also have no idea how I know this so certainly now, but I do. Anyway, the point is that they’ve had plenty of time to prepare.
I wonder if my call to Ade, in London, pinpointed me. The thought has barely formed in my mind when I know that it didn’t; using the phone from the supposedly deserted palace only confirmed what they already knew.
Both teams are splitting up, four members of each jogging and running through the palace in a clearly predetermined pattern, heading for every part of it. Two people in each team stay together, near where they entered. They’re communicating by some form of digital radio, encrypted. The transition-damping fields – in both cases coming from one of the two people in each team who stayed near their point of entry, I can see now – stop them using any techniques exclusive to us. The comms equipment will be local, just below the latest military spec in this world, to reduce the awkward-questions factor if they encounter any local officialdom.
One of the men near the front doors, the one not responsible for the damping effect, is called Jildeep. He is operations commanding officer as well as team leader. The woman standing near the jetty doors with the other blocker is called Gongova. She is Jildeep’s deputy and second in command. Oh, and lover. Interesting but probably not relevant.
Somebody from Gongova’s team will burst into the kitchen where I am in about eight seconds. She is called Tobbing. Like the rest she has some tracking ability. She will know that I’m the one they’re all looking for possibly even before she sees me; she only needs to get to within about four metres of a transitioner to sense them. My, how high-powered this all is. I should feel flattered.
Would you apply such a serious concentration of resources just to grab one off-message transitioner? I suppose you would, if the “you” involved meant you were Madame d’Ortolan, you were trying to dispose of everybody on the Central Council who disagreed with you – probably with the intention of mounting an utterly illegal and completely unprecedented coup – and the first assassin sent to accomplish this dubious mission (I assumed I was the first, anyway) promptly made a start at bumping off the people on the Council whom you regarded as your allies. You could see how that might make her cross.
But now I have this weird new power to add to the bizarre over-real flashbacks I’d been experiencing recently, not to mention the still-lingering suspicion that I’d flitted without the benefit of septus the wonder drug. All somewhat confusing, but highly interesting too.
I wonder, can I use my strange new sense to my advantage? I mean, you’d imagine.
How can this turn out? What can happen next?
The view of the palace splits suddenly into a blurring stack of further palaces, each subtly different.
I can concentrate on any one I wish to inspect. Ah. They’re alternative paths, different futures, the most likely quite clear, the less and less likely more and more blurred until they’re just snow, pointless. I look at them each in turn. The people in them – the members of the two teams searching the palace – are moving very slowly now, I notice, which is handy. Ms Tobbing is very close to the kitchen door, all the same. I can hear a slow, heavy thud back in what we’ll have to call physical reality. That’ll be one of her footsteps, that will. I can hear the echoes of the previous one still resounding.
Looking carefully, comparing and searching, I think I can see what to do. It’s a little problematic, but I can’t spot a humane alternative.
Turning the seat to face the open doorway, I sit back and put my hands up.
Ms Tobbing spins across the doorway, legs spread and slightly bent, gun levelled. Dark blue trouser suit, hair bunned. That’s all I have time to confirm before she Tasers me and I end up on the floor, jerking and spasming. It’s more painful and distressing than I imagined. I almost wish I’d chosen a different route through those futures, but the others were even bloodier. Not that I’ll expect any thanks, of course.
The rest arrive mob-handed seconds after Ms Tobbing stops zapping me and Dr Jildeep himself administers a syringe full of tranquilliser. I dare say they thought of including something supposed to stop me transitioning too, but those drugs can be permanently damaging and they’ll want me intact.
Wait. This path leads to me killing most of them. Another set of futures bursts into my mind, one of the areas or volumes I couldn’t see into clearly a minute earlier, but which – now that I’m closer to them – have become more distinct. Can I do what this implies I can do? Seriously? I’m slipping away here; I need to decide fast. If I just think in through here-
Ms Tobbing spins across the doorway, legs spread and slightly bent, gun levelled. Dark blue trouser suit, hair bunned. Combined earpiece and microphone. Nice blue blouse. That’s all I have time to confirm before she fires the Taser at me. I’ve used the five seconds and the high-def clarity of my X-ray-specs vision of the palace to pull open a drawer, grab a long boxed roll of aluminium foil and – knowing exactly the trajectory that the Taser’s two little barbs are going to take – feel them whack into it, letting the gun’s charge go zapping down the wires to discharge harmlessly into the foil. My other hand is wrapped in a kitchen towel taken from the same drawer; I use it to grab the wires connecting the barbs to the gun and yank them hard, pulling the still-in-the-course-of-being-surprised Ms Tobbing towards me before she can think to let go of the Taser.
Well, now we find out if the future-path vision thing is going to work or not. According to what I’ve just visualised this looks almost easy.
My hand closes round Ms Tobbing’s right wrist.
I sneeze suddenly, explosively.
My old self stares at me blankly.
Hmm. One of my more handsome incarnations. Though now with snot hanging from his nose. But not even a “Gesundheit.” Really.
I let go of the Taser’s trigger and the gun stops firing uselessly into the packet of foil, now fallen to the floor where I – he – was standing a moment ago. I prise his fingers off my wrist. He smiles vaguely, then shakes his head, his expression changes profoundly and he starts talking loudly in what I think is Slovenian (I have English, German, French, Italian, Mandarin). I use the gun to smack him under the jaw, shutting the kitchen door on him as he’s still staggering backwards.