Omega Page 2

  Battlezones. Now that was a title worth considering for the new series. It had a suitable ring of modernity to it.

  I swallowed the last of my beer and departed with a mannered wave to the three men.

  Five minutes later I slipped into Racing Green and emerged with a heathery V-neck. It was unlikely Rees would ever wear it, his style tending more to sweatshirts and ancient denims, but Lyneth had a mission to civilise him. Rees was a talented software designer specialising in graphical interfaces, and we’d employed him during the making of the series, so for once he wasn’t short of cash. But his personal life was a mess and he was presently living alone in a Peckham bedsit. Lyneth had invited him to spend Christmas Day with us. I doubted he would actually show up.

  I spotted a gap in the traffic and sprinted across the road. Two things happened, one after the other. The mobile in my pocket started trilling and I instinctively paused to pull it free. An instant later there was an enormous bang that picked me up and hurled me backwards.

  My head hit something—it may have been the body of a car—and I felt a blaze of enveloping pain. I saw the entire front of Hamley’s bulging outwards, dust blossoming and debris cascading down on the swarming street. Darkness swallowed me up.

  What followed were snippets of disconnected impressions: the persistent squeaking of a trolley wheel as I was bundled down a corridor; Christmas greetings cards pinned around the frame of a notice board; distant voices blurring in and out of earshot; a taste of stale blood on my bloated tongue. The pain in my head was so intense that it dwarfed everything else, even my fleeting thoughts of Lyneth and the girls. I kept passing out and resurfacing before eventually settling into a more prolonged period of unconsciousness. When I finally woke again I was in another world entirely.

  PART ONE

  ALTERED STATES

  ONE

  The room was painted a duck-egg green. I lay in a dim light, in a wrought iron bed that was not a modern fashionable type but one of authentic age. My head was raised on a series of pillows with starchy covers. There was the smell of something sooty.

  I risked a slight movement of the head, and felt a wave of pain worse than any headache. But it ebbed and I was able to inch myself up from the pillow.

  A crimson patchwork quilt lay across the bed. Beyond the foot of the bed was a mirrored dresser on which a tasselled table lamp gave off a dull orange glow. The room looked utilitarian, but the furniture gave it a cosy feel. A computer sat on a drop-leaf table beside the door. It was not switched on, and someone had hung a crocheted doily over its screen. Next to the dresser an area of wall had been hacked out to make a fireplace where coals were burning low in a cast iron grate. Its bricked-in surrounds were crudely finished.

  Had I been taken out of hospital? If so, to where? The room was quite unfamiliar to me, though in my drowsy state this didn’t bother me unduly.

  The door opened, casting a swathe of brighter light into the room. A squat middle aged woman in a floral dress and black cardigan entered. She came to the bed and, seeing that I was awake, said, “There is water here for your thirst.”

  She spoke gruffly, her English heavily accented. I tried to speak, failed.

  She filled a tumbler from a glass pitcher on the bedside table, put one hand behind my back and sat me upright. Blood swirled in my head. When my vision cleared I saw that she was holding the tumbler in front of my mouth. She was stocky and swarthy and smelt of mothballs and stale sweat. Her dark eyes regarded me incuriously from what I found myself thinking was a peasant’s face.

  I gulped like a child, the water dribbling down my chin. Finally she laid me back on the pillow and swabbed my chin with a scrap of cloth from her cardigan pocket.

  “There, there,” she said, giving a gap-toothed smile. “That will be better, yes?”

  For a long time after she was gone I just lay there, registering the unfamiliar surroundings with a kind of bleary curiosity. I began to make small movements, growing bolder when none provoked a renewed spasm of head pain. I threw back the covers. Swung my feet down to the floor. Slowly, very slowly, levered myself up until I was standing.

  A dull throbbing in the head, nothing more. I glimpsed my nakedness in the mirror as I crossed the room to the window. I began cranking a handle to raise the blind.

  Outside it was dark. No street lamps shone and there were no lights in any of the windows of the shadowy buildings visible across a snow-covered square. They were squat concrete fortresses of slit windows and angular walls, their roofs topped with radar dishes, artillery and missile emplacements. I knew them to be just the surface structures of an extensive underground complex housing all the administrative functions of the state. This was Westminster, the heart of a London I’d never seen before.

  And I was in one such building myself, several floors above ground. A fleeting memory came of flying low over the city at night: I’d looked down on the coiled milky band of the frozen Thames, with dark lines of roads and clusters of buildings stretching away on either side. There were extensive areas of mottled whiteness between them. The city’s broken panorama was like a study in monochrome, a photographic negative of something that was familiar yet unfamiliar.

  A dim reflection faced me in the window glass. It wasn’t me—not quite. A slimmer, harder-edged version of myself, with cropped hair and a more upright stance. An alter ego, staring back like a not-quite-identical twin.

  I heard footsteps outside the room, felt my legs beginning to give way. Somehow I managed to get back to the bed, burying myself under the quilt, letting sleep wash over me like a benedicon.

  TWO

  All that night I dreamt that I kept waking to find myself lying in a modern hospital room, a monitor blinking off to my left. I was propped up under crisp cotton sheets, left alone in the suffocating sterile warmth. It was a fever sleep filled with confusion. At various times I saw two quite distinct women. The first, seated beside the door in the hospital room, was the same age as myself, dark auburn hair framing a sensuous and intelligent face. I couldn’t recall her name, though I knew we had once been lovers. At other times I was back in the green room, attended by a younger woman, sallow skinned and gamin, her black hair tied back in a ponytail. When I woke fully again I was in the wrought iron bed and a man in a white coat was standing beside me.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Would you like some breakfast?”

  A noise escaped my throat, something between a cough and a clearing of the throat.

  “What time is it?”

  This was an odd question under the circumstances, but it hadn’t really come from me. The voice was different from my own, huskier, with a stronger Welsh accent.

  “Just after eight,” he said. “I’d suggest something light. Some cereal or toast. I’m Tyler, by the way. Sir Gruffydd consigned you to my tender mercies.”

  He meant my other self’s uncle. I had an image of a florid, white-haired man in his seventies. A field marshal with a long record of service. His name was spelt in the Welsh fashion—I knew this without knowing how.

  “Am I all right?” I heard myself ask.

  “You were lucky,” Tyler said. “It’s probably just mild concussion and a few scratches. You should be up and about in a day or two.”

  “Was it a bomb?”

  “Not my pigeon.” He pulled down one of my eyelids and peered perfunctorily at it. I could smell the nicotine on his yellowed fingers. He was middle-aged, brisk in manner, a horseshoe of greying hair fringing his bald skull. He wore a taupe-coloured shirt and tie under his white coat.

  “Any headaches or grogginess?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Other symptoms?”

  “Like what?”

  “Sleep disturbances? Nausea? Nightmares?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  This was said brusquely, a determined rejection of any admission that might be construed as personal weakness. It wasn’t me talking: it was my other self.

  “Good,” Tyler sa
id. “We’ll rest you up for twenty-four hours, put you on light duties for a couple of weeks.”

  “I’m only just back from overseas. I’d rather be occupied.”

  “Up to you. But don’t overdo it. Now—breakfast. What’s it to be?”

  I realised that I had no appetite—or rather my counterpart had none.

  “I never eat breakfast,” I heard him say. “A glass of orange juice would do, if there’s any.”

  I sensed a craving for some freshly squeezed juice, like that available during his recent trip to Brazil, sharp and sweet and thick with pulp. There was little chance of it here.

  “We’ll see what we can do. I take it you remember everything that happened?”

  A sudden panic at this. He was blank. Then he remembered a blinding soundless flash, his car being consumed by it, though he was not inside it. He was hurled over as the shock wave hit him. A further memory of crawling through rubble before hands took him, helping him up into the back of a white van with the shield and crossed swords emblem of the Security Police.

  “Of course,” he said. “There was an—”

  Tyler put his hand up sharply. “Don’t tell me. Need to know basis. Wait till you see Sir Gruffydd.”

  He checked my pulse, asked to see my tongue. It felt coated.

  “I do believe you’ll live,” he announced at last. “Make sure you eat something. I’ll pop in tomorrow morning and give you a final once over. All right?”

  “Yes.”

  With this, he left.

  I felt like a spy perched in someone else’s head, an invisible spectator to thoughts and speech and actions that came from within me yet did not belong to me. I was cohabiting, but with no knowledge of the life I had here except what I could glean from my counterpart’s reactions. The explosion that had injured him was not the one I remembered.

  As soon as Tyler was gone, I got out of bed—or rather my other self did so. Still naked, he crossed to the mirror on the dressing table.

  A cut above the right eyebrow was already healing, and there was no other sign of injury. He had a similar complexion and was about the same height and age as myself, though distinctly leaner. He staot the his reflection for a long time with an expression of mild consternation. It was like looking at a close relative, a brother, perhaps, yet he was someone I had never seen before. A thick growth of stubble did not disguise the pockmarks that covered his face from brow to chin. I assumed he had suffered badly from acne, though his thoughts remained resolutely closed to me at that moment. When he put a hand up to the mirror I saw crescents of grime under his fingernails and felt the cool smoothness of the glass.

  An adjoining door opened on a narrow bathroom. It was unheated and chilly. The brass showerhead that sprouted from the white-tiled wall looked antiquated and encrusted with hard-water deposits. When he turned the tap there was a creaking noise, followed by a delay before tea-coloured water began spurting out. It soon cleared, though it remained tepid. To my alarm he twisted the lever to cold before climbing under it. The chill made him gasp with a mixture of shock and exhilaration that I felt myself just as keenly.

  The soap was a mustard-yellow brick that stank of coal tar. He lathered himself vigorously, especially his groin and armpits. His body was wiry, with not a hint of spare flesh. I had the queasy feeling of being an involuntary witness to the intimate actions of a stranger. At the same time I was fascinated by the contrast between his habits and my own. I was used to hot showers in a heated bathroom. I’d fold a soft towelling robe around myself, whereas he began to rub himself down with a stiff off-white bath towel redolent of carbolic.

  After this, still naked, he shaved, using a bristle brush, a stick of shaving soap and a single-bladed steel razor that sat on the shelf. There were other toiletries in plain white packaging. It was years since I had wet-shaved, and never with such a primitive razor. He was diligent, lathering thoroughly, stretching and contorting his pitted face as he slid the razor over it, paying scrupulous attention to the crevices under his nostrils and the line of his sideboards. There was several days’ growth to remove, and he made a great ceremony of it.

  His eyes were a deeper brown than mine, his nose narrower, hair cropped in a short-back-and-sides that made no concessions to style. Abdominal muscles rippled as he did a series of stretching exercises in front of the mirror, taking deep breaths and exhalations. He had none of my incipient middle-aged flab.

  His clothing had been draped over the back of an armchair in the bedroom—an army uniform in a greyish khaki. The jacket had shoulder patches showing the Union flag below a sky-blue diamond with a single five-pointed star in gold. It signified a major’s rank.

  I knew this only because he knew it: the uniform was otherwise unfamiliar, and certainly not that of the present British Army. Under the chair were matt-black leather boots, fleece-lined. The closure strips had attachments resembling Velcro. A padded thigh-length combat jacket in pale winter-camouflage colours hung on the back of the door.

  He donned his vest and underpants. Everything had been freshly laundered. I knew that he was intending to dress and go out, but suddenly he felt weak and sat down on the bed.

  A tumbler of orange juice had been put on the bedside table while he was showering. He picked it up and drained it. The juice was thin and from a can; but it took the sour taste from his mouth. He rose again and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

  The toiletries were his own: a bag bearing the initials O.M. sat on the shelf. I knew instantly his name was the same as mine. A plain white tube had FLUORIDE stencilled along it in black. The toothpaste tasted like mashed minted chalk, but he even scrubbed his tongue, probing so deeply I was amazed he didn’t gag.

  As we emerged from the bathroom the woman entered. She was plainly surprised to find us out of our bed and in our underwear.

  “What is this?” she said in her accented English. “No getting up yet! Back to bed.”

  His inclination was to ignore her, but he couldn’t deny the weakness he felt.

  “You will land us in bad trouble!” the woman said, scuttling forward and taking him by the elbow. “No getting up today. You must rest. Plenty of resting.”

  He let her lead him back to the bed, though he insisted on getting into it himself. She tucked him in as one might do a child, though he noticed that never once did she look directly at him.

  “Where are you from?” he asked.

  “Here,” she said, folding under the bottom edges of the quilt. “I live here.”

  “I mean originally.”

  She gave no answer, still busy with the sheets.

  “Are you Polish?”

  She made a noise that sounded like an expletive, and left without another word.

  THREE

  The white hospital room. I was back. Through the window I could see dingy clouds scudding across a blue sky.

  There was no sensation of transition. I had simply switched in an instant from one place to another. From another mind and body back to my own.

  Unable to raise myself from the pillow, I felt both dull-witted and incredulous. I couldn’t begin to imagine what was happening to me.

  I heard a rustling sound, managed to turn my head a little.

  Tanya was sitting at the side of the bed.

  Tanya! She was the auburn-haired woman I had dreamt was watching over me. Once, in our university days, we had been lovers.

  She was wearing reading glasses, a hardback on her lap. Under her brown suede coat shewore a print silk skirt with calf-length boots. Her hair, cropped as a student, was now free-flowing to her shoulders but still the deep red-brown it had always been. She looked prosperous, but not showily so. Her very presence at my bedside meant something dreadful had happened.

  Lyneth and the girls had been injured in the explosion, or worse. Tanya wouldn’t have been here otherwise. I had no family apart from my errant brother and my father, who was in a nursing home. Perhaps they’d been unable to contact Rees, who had a habit of
dropping out of sight. Somehow Tanya must have heard the news and come to my bedside to be there when I woke. It had to be serious: of her own choice Lyneth wouldn’t have allowed Tanya anywhere near me.

  Sara and Bethany. My mind rebelled at the very idea that anything could have happened to them. Perhaps they were all in intensive care, somewhere in the very same hospital, mere wards away. They would be clinging on to life, surviving as I’d survived. Or perhaps the girls had suffered minor injuries and were being tended by Lyneth while I recuperated.

  I tried calling out to Tanya, demanding to know what had become of them. But nothing would emerge. Here, unlike in the other world, I had a distinct and proper sense of my own physicality; but my body was refusing to cooperate.

  Could it have been a terrorist attack? A suicide bomber, even? Or something as banal as a leaky gas main? How many people had been caught up in the explosion? How many were dead?

  My thoughts raced like pond skaters over the surface of these questions, but whatever drugs I’d been given muted my reactions to a dreamy bewilderment.

  Tanya turned a page of her book. I willed her to look up, to notice I was awake. This wasn’t happening. I couldn’t allow it to have happened.

  “So,” said a gruff male voice, “you’ve been playing with fire again, eh?”

  My uncle was short and stocky, with a genial expression on his rubicund face. His epaulettes and scarlet gorget collars bore the insignia of his rank, gold oakleaf embroidery enclosing wreathed batons, a lion rampant within its ring of stars. He pulled a chair up to my bedside and gently pushed me back when I tried to sit up.

  “No, no, just lie there,” he said. “The doctor tells me you need to have a good rest, so let’s not have any standing on ceremony.”

  I had the immediate sense that he was speaking in another language, lilting and glottal. Apart from a smattering of French, English was the only language I knew, yet I understood him perfectly.