Permafrost(22)

“Thank you,” I mouthed.

From both of us.

We tipped over.

There was a side impact, the ambulance tilted, then flipped onto its side. The ambulance woman slammed into the shelf, slumping into instant unconsciousness. I would have been thrown hard against the sidewall, except that I’d already been strapped onto a stretcher. Even then, the impact was bruising. Motionless now, the ambulance spun its wheels, the motor still revving. The ambulance woman was lying over me, a gash in her forehead, out cold. I hoped she was out cold, at least.

I tried moving. I was thinking that there had to be a driver in the front compartment, someone else who might be hurt. I hadn’t caused whatever had just happened to us, but I was responsible for this ambulance being here in the first place. I struggled against my restraints. With the ambulance woman pressed over me, it was too hard to reach the straps.

Was this part of your big, carefully thought-out plan, Valentina?

No. Not at all.

That’s good to know. I’d hate to feel I wasn’t in capable hands.

Someone opened the rear doors, shining a light into the interior. The torch beam settled on my face, lingering there for a second. The person climbed into the ambulance, grunting as they pushed against what was now the upper door, holding it open against the force of gravity. It was a man, middle-aged, quite burly and thickset, and not wearing any sort of hospital or civil uniform, just a scruffy leather jacket over a thick sweater. The man clambered in, setting down the torch, and moved the ambulance woman off me.

“Did you just drive into us?” I asked.

The man eased the ambulance woman down onto what had been the sidewall, but which was now the floor. Then he undid my straps and began to move me off the stretcher, none too gently. “Get out. Police are on their way. We need to drive.”

Do you know this man?

No. Not at all.

Then can I suggest you ask him who the hell he is?

I did just that.

The man looked at me with a combination of contempt and amusement. He had a face full of stubble, a heavily veined nose, bags under his eyes and a shock of thick black hair bristling up from a very low hairline, almost meeting his eyebrows.

“Who am I?” he said. “Oh, that’s easy. We’ve already met. I’m Antti.”

*

He had a car waiting. It was not the same car he had used to sideswipe the ambulance, which was now badly damaged around the front wheel. He’d planned it, I thought. Planned to ram the ambulance, and known he’d need a second vehicle, which he had parked on the perimeter road, ready for us.

So let’s clear this up. You don’t know this man, but you do know him?

I know Antti. Antti’s someone else, another member of the team. A pilot, like me. Except . . .

He helped me into the passenger seat, then went round to the driver’s side. He got in, started the car, flooring the throttle hard, swerving onto the road and sending us barrelling away from the scene of the crash. I tilted my head, catching my reflection in the side mirror. It was the first time I’d seen Tatiana Dinova properly. It was an exceedingly strange thing, to look in a mirror and see a difference face staring back. There was a whole system of brain circuitry being confused, a system that had spent a lifetime being lulled into the idea that it had an adequate understanding of reality.

Anyone tell you it’s rude to stare?

I’m sorry.

I looked through her. Beyond the face, beyond the too-thin bone structure, the eyes that were the wrong shape and colour, the nose that didn’t belong, the bandage, the pressure marks from the oxygen mask.

Beyond to several pairs of moving flashing lights, as other emergency vehicles came nearer.

“You can’t be Antti,” I said, once we’d turned off the perimeter road, onto a connecting road that took us away from the main hospital complex.

The billion-rouble question!

The thickset man took his eyes off the wheel long enough to glance at me. “And why’s that, exactly?”

“Because I’m the first. No one else has gone into time yet. There’s just four pilots: you, me, Vikram and Miguel, and no one else has done it yet.” I smacked the console in front of me. “Crap, I was just talking to you, Antti! About two minutes ago. You were trying to tell Cho that I needed a rest, that I was being sent in again too soon.”

So, let’s get this straight—for my benefit, if no one else’s. You’ve been sent back from the future, and you thought you were the only one who’d done it so far. But now this guy shows up, and he’s acting as if he’s already ahead of you?

The man spun the wheel hard, negotiating a mini roundabout. The flashing blue lights were farther away now. Ahead was a complex of industrial-looking buildings, warehouses and factory units. I wasn’t even sure that we were still within the hospital grounds.

“I remember that conversation,” the man said. “The only difference is it was about nine months ago.”

“What the fuck!”

What the fuck, indeed! I like your style, Val. Do all schoolteachers swear like you in the future?

“You were right,” he answered, calmly enough. “You were the first of us to go into time. Didn’t seem fair, to begin with, you skipping ahead like that. But Margaret always said there was an element of uncertainty about which of us would get the first immersion, depending on how quickly the control structures meshed. Get down.”