his head exposed, and that was all but enveloped by a cluster of automated mirrors and optical devices that allowed his gaze to roam free without troubling the muscles in his damaged neck. These mirrors and lenses swivelled and shifted constantly, bending and distorting reflections of his face so it appeared almost pixelated and an observer could never be sure where those eyes were going to pop up next. Eyes of black ice, sour and entombed.
Above him a panoramic screen array carried multiple data, news and intelligence feeds. Optical tracking meant he could manipulate it all at a glance – trawl the web, analyse data, model an idea, visit any place on earth, even (if looks could kill…) order a drone strike.
The meeting in the CFAC at Hook Hall had been relayed to him in real time through a concealed 816-micron digital video camera built into his agent’s spectacles. It was transmitting pictures first to a microprocessor sewn into the agent’s scalp via an induction loop, then via tiny data-burst relays between specially adapted low-energy light bulbs fitted throughout the Hook Hall complex, and thereafter via the Scimitar Intelcomms 8648 satellite to Siberia. Transmission lag to Kaparis – 0.44 seconds.
It was an ingenious system.
His serotonin levels should’ve been satisfactory. Instead Kaparis was intensely irritated. The pictures from the live feed kept jumping because the agent constantly flicked the spectacles up and down. Despite the eighteen months of effort and detailed planning that had gone into this most complicated operation, no one had thought to supply the correct ophthalmic prescription.
1 Was simply doing your job really so difficult?
2 Was it only him that cared about the details?
3 What must it be like to be ordinary?
“Heywood?” Kaparis said, summoning his butler in a cut-glass English accent.
“Sir?”
“Establish who supplied the incorrect lenses for the camera spectacles.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then have their eyes pulled out. And salted.”
“Yes, sir.”
Killing would be too much. It was important to keep a sense of proportion.
Onscreen, a helicopter hove into view. The image flicked again, taunting his leniency.
“And Heywood?”
“Sir?”
“Record the screams.”
DAY ONE 12:51 (BST). Hook Hall, Surrey
Finn’s first view of Hook Hall was from above: a grand old country house with a formal garden, surrounded by a complex of ultra-modern buildings. Outside the largest of these buildings, as they came into land, Finn could see a clutch of officials and lab-coated scientists drawn towards the spot like ants to a dropped ice cream.
Al took off his helmet as they touched down and indicated Finn should do the same.
“We are still on holiday until I say so. OK?”
“If you say so!” Finn yelled back, still numb with exhilaration from the short flight and having already decided to just go with the bewildering flow. He stepped off the aircraft after Al and stumbled self-consciously through the rotor wash, half deaf, towards the small welcoming committee.
A shortish, fattish old man was first to greet them, overwhelmed apparently to be meeting –
“Dr Allenby! An honour! Professor Channing. I reviewed your paper on anti-concentric-kinesthesis.”
“Wonderful. This is Finn,” said Al.
“Hi!” said Finn.
“Is the resort this way?” Al asked.
“Ah…?” said the Professor, confused.
Huge road transporters packed with equipment were lined up outside the large building waiting to go through its hangar-sized doors.
“What an unusual hotel. Is there room service?” said Al.
“Er…”
“Finn likes chips, don’t you, Finn?”
“Or potato wedges,” Finn explained, unsure why this was relevant.
“We have a canteen…?” tried the Professor.
Al took in the line-up of trucks. “What’s all this for? Are you having a pageant?”
By now Professor Channing was completely confused.
“No, it’s… every centrifuge, laser and electromagnetic accelerator we can lay our hands on. This has just arrived from Harwell, part of the new Woolfson Accelerator, and…”
“Oh my goodness, I think I spot an old friend!” said Al, taking off down the line of transporters, Professor Channing trotting to keep up.
Finn’s strong instinct was to keep out of the way, but Al pulled him along front and centre, determined to make a spectacle, leading everyone a merry dance as he searched among the trucks like a weekend shopper in the aisles of Ikea.
As they entered the Central Field Analysis Chamber, Finn felt like they were entering a game, the ‘facility’ level of a first-person shooter – concrete industrial construction, glass control booths, steel gantries and outsize scientific equipment: an outlandish vision of a not too distant future. The big difference here was that real human security personnel carried real guns: large, heavy and scary.
“Aha!” Al cried. “It’s you, Fatty!”
Al seemed to be addressing a large vehicle. But, as they came round it, Finn saw what was inside. Huge quarter-sections of a giant metal doughnut, each the size of a cottage, were being manoeuvred off the transporter by an outsize forklift, a freak-show mirror of perfect polished steel on the inside, a mess of hydraulics and wiring on the outside, featuring domestic plumbing and gaffer tape – a dazzling piece of engineering that looked like it’d been knocked together in a shed: very Uncle Al.
Finn caught his distorted reflection on the perfect inner surface and remembered a night at home the year before when Al had appeared unexpectedly on the doorstep to demand Toad-in-the-Mustard-Hole from Grandma (the family comfort food). He had sworn and ranted at the table saying “they’ve mugged me” and “they have press-ganged Fatty”. There was little indication who ‘they’ or ‘Fatty’ were, but a general hatred and distrust of anyone In Charge had come across before he’d drunk too much and fallen asleep
