The next few days pass in a kind of darkness, Ellie and Sam feed me, but otherwise they make no demands upon me.  I drift around the space-station looking out the windows, sometimes I retire into my cabin and barricade myself in, sometimes I roam around freezing cold barely dressed.

I’m moral, I’m a moral man.

Someone will take life, some will do it, and leave the widows and orphans with nothing.  Some will take their lives too, I have seen it, on the basis that they have nothing, or that they are family, and thus, the sins of the father and all that.

It is wrong.

In war we take life, and it is no less wrong, but there is a moment that comes, when it is you or them, and if someone must die then it is them, because you, well you want to live.  In war, you give up some of your humanity, you give it up[ because if you thought about those you killed, how they died, who they left behind, you could not.  You could not pull that trigger, fire that tank shell, mortar, rifle, pistol, wield that stick.  Everyone’s life has a meaning and you would be taking that away and all the training of humanity, of your father and mother and your friends and your relatives and your priest and your rabbi and your everyone teaches you that life is a precious gift, precious beyond measure, a gift from God, from Gaia, from the Prophet.

And then…

You join the army and your Sargent, he tells you that it is you or them.

And you go to war, and take this gift away, sometimes from half a dozen people at once.  And in your anger and your adrenaline and your pain you are glad, job well done, saved your mates, preserved our lives.

There is no excuse, you did what you did because you must, because it was you or them.

Because you were keeping the peace, preventing further bloodshed later on, preventing drugs trafficking, people trafficking, genocide, preventing something somewhere, by making the bad people GO AWAY.

But you have ripped their lives away, taken what cannot be returned.

_________

I shave again, the ritual comforting me as I possess myself.  I know that I have avoided looking at myself in the mirror, and I still do to some extent, it is hard to meet my own eyes.  For what I have done, I am truly sorry, for what I tried to do I am truly sorry, for what I am about to do, I am truly sorry.

_________

They are talking again when I return, laughing at some joke, but it dies away as they see me standing there.  I am waiting to be received, I don’t wish to intrude, to…, to push myself upon them.

“Ah, but you do, still I think, Jessop.” Ellie says turning to me.  ”You still desire to possess yourself, and to take power over your situation, but you have none.”  She lifts a glass to her lips.  ”You think deep in your dark soul that possessing me will overcome your desires.”  Drinks the heavy red liquid within.  ”And what will you do Jessop, when you find that it does not sate your lust, what will you do?”

She’s wearing that dress, that black short velvet dress that clings to her like a second skin, she is looking directly at me, challenging me, provoking me, mocking me.

Sweet sits up straight in her chair as I walk to Ellie. I take her by the shoulders gently.

“I was angry, and yes I was trying to take control.  Do not excuse my behaviour because you understand the reasons for it.”  I drop my arms and look down.  ”I’m sorry.”

There is a moment of stillness, where she is simply looking at me and smiling.  Then, she takes me by the hand, and leads me to the table.

“You are truly a man in possession of yourself.”  Sam smiles and nods at this.

“You think so,” I say, “you think I’m in control of myself.”

“Yes, and when you do too, I shall show you what lovers do.”  This makes me tremble. “Clearly, that is not a thing for now, ” she carries on, “for now, I shall give you a gift, something from my researches, something I know about you.”  My trembling increases rather than dissipates.  I lean forward expectantly.

“Tell me, please, tell me what you know.”

“Well, here it is then, John.”

We go through explanations again, only the details differ, Sam asks different questions.

I spend my time in thought.

I know that I have spent a life in anger, and that the boat was finally a moment of peace.  The time aboard allowed me to reflect.

The one who caused this, the ice, the whiteout of a world, do we have to kill?

Sam’s rehabilitation takes some time, and Ellie works at the Void Ships’s systems, I wonder what is taking so long.  Eventually she tells me that there now no launch craft to take us down to the planet, and that we will die here.  She shows me her project.

It looks like nothing so much as an a sort of egg covered in little tiles.  There is a ring around the narrow end which is divided up into segments.  She explains that these segments are what will guide us, they are the control surfaces, but I do not understand why they are so small.

“Because if they are any bigger they’ll get ripped off.  We’re going to re-enter the atmosphere with almost no control, it’s this and a parachute.”  I look glumly at this device.  She opens a single door in the size, there are no windows. What there are is three leather heavily padded seats, and a joystick.  ”It’s ok, I’ve done this before.”  She says.  I’m not reassured.

Days pass and I spend time in the Garden, but truthfully I need to be doing something, talking, doing, I don’t know what and I go in search of Sam.  Ellie is making use of her in the Egg.  They are stuffing more padding behind the seats.

I thought I’d get to know Sweet better, but it seems that she and Ellie are getting on, there is what I would describe as Girl Talk happening, but I’m alone here, and I need to work out what I’m doing and why I’m doing it, and for that I need information.

“Why am I going to kill this person?”  They look up at me and exchange a glance.

“Because he is destroying this world and everyone on it, and he does not care.”  Ellie wipes her hands on a rag.  ”We have to save it.”

“Why?”

“Do you remember that I said that there are countless  billions of universes but only a couple of hundred of these worlds that we can reach?”  I nod.  ”Well that’s why, rarity value.  There’s something else too.”  I wait.  ”If we don’t save worlds from becoming uninhabitable, it increases the probability that all the rest will get that way too.  Worlds kind of clump, like star groups.”

“Galaxies.”

“Not on that scale.  But in realities.”

“But most of the universes are empty here and we’re alone.”  I think for a moment.  ”Has there been any radio contact?”

“Not really.”  I look down for a second, contemplating my future, or my past, I’m not sure which it is.  I have to save this world, use my skills as a killer, just the point when I feel, feel, feel!

I could give it up.

But it’s the right thing to do now, and I could give it up.  Was it the right thing to do before?

Was it?  I thought I had a moral code, someone else would have done it, I did it better.  There is a hand on my shoulder.  Sweet, Sam is standing in front of me, Ellie is beside me with her hand on my shoulder.

“We know.”

Do they, do they?  I push them away roughly, I’m angry, so angry, how could they know?  How could they?  I know I’m shouting, shouting and yelling, asking the question, but I don’t hear myself.  I’m throwing things, they move carefully out of the way, but after I have throw quite a lot of things around and ranted and raged I being to notice that they are just waiting, not scared, not perturbed, just waiting.

That angers me more and I direct it at Ellie rushing for her, I want to break her, want to crush that waiting, want the fear to show.  I want her to be scared, bend her to my will.  What I want in many ways is dark, it is a lust I did not know I had, and a darkness descends as I move towards her.

_______________

Pain, contrary to what people think, is not easily overcome especially when someone is in control of it.  It is a red light in the body’s response to stimuli, an attention getter than can only be ignored when the endorphins kick in.  That takes time, and new applications of pain don’t give that time, so one’s attention can easily be focussed by shifting the point of attention.

Ellie is in control of this red light now, and is shining it on two or three places on my body, which turns out to be quite vulnerable.

“Jessop.”  She says, breathing hard for a moment, “You’re not stupid, so I’ll assume you know that I’ve got the upper hand here.”  I nod.  ”Have you calmed down?”  Nod.  ”Now I’m going to let you go, and then I’m going to say something, and this time you’re going to think about it.”

“Alright.”  She releases my thumb, and my foot, and, it turns out, a place in the small of my back.  I step away slowly.  She looks at me carefully, not for signs of violence, I perceive, but for signs of understanding.  ”I’m ready.”  I say, noting that Sweet, Sam, hasn’t moved at all, just a look of concern on her face, and a tapping foot.

“I’m you, Jessop.  I know what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it. The only difference is, that I am a mirror image.”

“How can you be me?  I’m, well, me.  And you’re a slip of a girl.”

“What were you trying to do to me, Jessop?”  I look away, not wanting to face up to it.

“Yes.”  She says, knowing.  I’m ashamed, and I turn red, and away.  I want to run away, but we’re here orbiting a frozen Earth, and there is no where to run.  I walk off, at least, to get as far away as possible.  There is a sound behind me.

“Jessop?”  She is standing there looking calm and beautiful.  I pause, not turning.  ”I’m old than I look, older than the sun.”  I wait.  ”When you can face up to it, come to me.  I will show you what lovers do.”

I nod, once, and then go away to be alone.

We’ve been here two days now.  I have had a lot to think about.

I kill for a living, except that I don’t.  I have put a life time of emotion and connection into novels that by any standard are pretty trashy bodice-rippers, and I realise now that that this has earned me more money easily than my “profession.”

I have hidden behind a moral code that provides for those that are left behind, because if I don’t do it, someone else will, and they won’t have that code.

I have kidded myself somehow that I am essentially a good person, while mouthing the acknowledgements that I’m doing something essentially wicked.  I’m not evil.

In times past I would not have entertained the thought.  Charles and Hicks and the crew of the Hesperus, the ship, boat, whatever.  They have changed me.  I have been able to kill with remorse or sorry because I have not been connected to anyone.

Perhaps if I had not written all those novels I would not be such a good killer.

Perhaps if I had not been such a good killer, I would not have written all of those novels.

I am not in a position to do anything.  Ellie has spent her time repairing some of the systems of the VS Hesperus, and I have floated around doing nothing except being introspective.

The conversation following her announcement was difficult.

“Kill someone?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure I do that any more.”  She looks at me with that surprised look she has habitually worn in the mirror.

“Really?  You’re the best, the best of the best, why would you stop?”

“Because I made a moral choice?”

“Morality hasn’t bothered up until now.”

“Charles and Hicks changed that.  The crew of that ship changed that.”

“Then you owe them.”

“Do I?”  I stand up and  walk around a bit, look for some tea in a cupboard.

“Other one.  What changed?”

“I grew, well, connected.”

“And you’ve been alone otherwise.”

“Yes except for…”

____________

The memories come flooding back.  I still don’t know my own name, but there are, apparently, other things I do not remember.  Bad things.

My parents, my genteel, caring father, and my mother, I see her face, her brown hair and her green eyes.

“..no-one.We were on holiday.   It was the holiday of a lifetime, I was 15 years old.  We went to Africa, a grand tour.  My father didn’t travel well, but he thought I should see the world.  It was wonderful.  For a while.

There were poachers.  They were local people, starving, desperate; not the type you might see on TV.  These were desperate people.

They thought they could make money from kidnapping after all, we had our holiday money.  The government, it wouldn’t negotiate.  Dad wouldn’t give in.  He wouldn’t cooperate.

It was too much for the kidnappers.  They shot him.  They shot him in the foot, the leg, the thigh.  It lasted a long time.  He stuck to it, he wouldn’t give in.  They did the same in the other leg.  They knew what they were doing, they didn’t kill him.  We had to drag him around on a litter.  No pain killers, no treatment.  Nothing.

They didn’t touch my mother, for a long time.  They didn’t have to, she fell apart, it was up to me.  If I told her what to do, exactly, she did it, but nothing more.

It took dad ten days to die.  Mum died the next day.  I think her heart broke.  They left them in the bush.

I stole one of their machine guns in the night.  I stole all their guns.  They thought I was harmless, little Chinese-British boy.

I woke them up by shooting one of them in the feet.  I did the same to the rest, they could not run fast enough.

I tied them with rope I found to one of their landrovers, in a long chain.  I remember them yelling and screaming.  My father hadn’t screamed at all.

When I had done this, I tied them to the landrover and drove though the bush slowly until I found lions.  And then I left them.

I swore that if I killed again, it would be for right, in a moral way.

I don’t know what is right any more.

I told the authorities that I escaped, nothing more.  They didn’t release the details of the deaths.  I joined the army when I was sixteen.  Everyone thought it was for the best.

______________________

The army trained me not to waver around, discipline, which I desperately needed.  They heard my story, I said I just wanted to get on, and they listened to that too, after a while, and it turned out that it was better than any therapy.

I put my actions into the context a of a traumatised and angry fifteen year old, who had seen his parents die in a most horrible fashion, and taken retribution, terrible retribution, but I learned something, that I had left these men’s families without a means of support, and my retribution was far reaching, probably to their deaths too.

My father was genteel man, he would not have wanted what I did.

I know that people kill, I resolved to make it better.

I made it better.

______________________

“…no-one.  There’s no one.”  She looks at me curiously.

“What then?”

“I don’t know if I’ve made a moral choice.”

“This man, the one we want killed.”  I wait, “He’s killing the world.”

“In what way?”

“You won’t believe it.”  She turns and works at the computer again, wriggling her fingers in the screen, tapping at the brass inlaid keyboard.

“You’d be surprised at what I’m able to believe these days.”

“This world isn’t like your world.”  I look steadily at her.  There is something.  ”People have abilities here sometimes.  Rare people.  This is one of those times.”

“He’s causing the ice age isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because he wants space for himself, or the colony of the Americas.”  The penny drops.

“You didn’t say ‘our world.’”

“No.”

“You’re not from here are you?”

“No.”

“So where are you from?”

“There’s no way of explaining it.”

“But you’re from Earth.”

“Yes.  Not your Earth.”

“Naturally.  How many are there, millions?  Infinite umbers?”

“Um.  No.”

“No?”

“We think there are a couple of hundred.”

“What?”  I’m amazed.  I would have thought that there would be two or and uncountable number.  This is very strange, at least I think so.  She has an explanation that is not only plausible, but remarkably likely, once she says it.

“The rest of them are not synchronised with our time and don’t exist yet, aren’t here yet or have long passed.  These ones are just the ones we can synchronise with.”

“What do you mean?”

“How much techy stuff do you want.”  I think about this.

“An overview.”  She gets up and makes some more tea, I think about all the reaction mass it must have taken to get this up here.  She is busy, and I look at her with interest again, something stirring within me.  She’s wearing that little black dress I first saw her in.  I get the urge to ask her a question.

“How old are you?”  She looks at me archly.

“In as much as it means anything any more, I’m actually two hundred and forty eight years old in your time.  In mine I’m barely seventeen, here I’m nearly a thousand years old.”  This is disconcerting.

“All that doesn’t mean anything to me.  How old are you in your personal timeline.”

“That’s clever, you’re not totally ignorant.”  No, I’m not. ”I’m seventeen.”

“How come you know so much?”

“Because I’m seventeen, but I experience time in between when I’m else when, I have lived for a thousand years, but in my world I am seventeen, and no-one knows any different.  I am protected by my government as you are by yours.”

“Not any more,” I say, and I find that I am saddened by this.  I realise that I had a relationship with Charles and Hicks that meant something, I’m not sure what.  She see my expression, and lays a hand upon my fondly for a moment.  ”Ellie,” I say, but I hesitate for a moment, “Ellie, who are you?”  The warm hand is withdrawn, and in that moment of contact I see the differences between us, my brown hand and her white one, my thick, rough fingers and her slender, pale, fingers.  I have been immune, but suddenly I find her beautiful beyond measure and I have a powerful desire to protect her and nurture her. It’s confused by feelings of sexual attraction and lust, and then mixed up with strange feelings that I cannot identify, I get a flash of her in the mirror, and i am utterly dumbfounded when from this well of feeling a truth comes to me, that I could not have foreseen.  I’m dumb-struck for a second, and then the words come to me, the fatal words.

“You’re me.”

________________

I know this, somehow, inside, but I cannot say what her connection is to me.

“It’s a lot simpler than you think.”  I wait.  ”You’re me, I’m you because we were born at the exact same moment in our respective universes, the exact same moment, down to the smallest scale.  It’s uncommon, but we share a bond.  Usually those who share this bond are replicas of each other.  We are not.”  She sighs.  ”As a result, we’re of use, and the rest of them are not.”

“How many of us are there?”

“Maybe a dozen?”

“And my government knows about this?”

“Yes.”

It takes some time to absorb, and I realise that it will take long time, that I might not understand for some time to come, I have after all lived only one life, and she has lived many.

There is a beeping from the control room, and we depart the kitchen to see what it is.

______________

It is the medical bay.  Sweet is ready and is waking up.  The strange machinery helps her out of the water and withdraws the probes and devices.  I turn my back as Ellie helps her with a robe and some clothes.

When I turn again, she is looking at me.

“I’m glad you’re ok, Lieutenant.” I say.

“Oh I think in the circumstances, you can call me Samantha, Sam.”  I must look haunted, because she brightens up considerably.  ”It’s not all bad, we were expecting something like that, and it’s not fixed in  stone is it?”  She looks at Ellie.

“I wasn’t going to get his hopes up, and we haven’t finished talking about the job yet.”  The Lieutenant, Sam, looks only slightly perturbed.

“Well, we’re all hale and hearty and, I think, ready for action.”  I feel my face crease up, and I see her reacting to it.  ”You just have to get on with it man, and then we can see to the other stuff.  Come on Jessop, buck up.  It’s time I had a cup of tea.  Where are we anyway?”

[more]

It is some hours later.

Ellie and I have removed out suits at last, and Ellie spent some time checking the operation of them.  She showed me at one point what looked like a burnt out valve, this was what caused Sweet’s suit to fail.  Sweet in the meantime has been stripped and put in the medical unit, which seems to consists of a tank and breathing apparatus.  We have to rouse her before she goes in, so that she does not panic.  It’s not easy.  Her fingers and toes look very damaged, terminally so, but Ellie assures me that the machine will repair all things.

While she busied herself with Sweets’ recovery, I looked around the space station, pardon me, void ship.

It was like a space station in every respect that I expected, doors that seal with manual releases, computers, comfy chairs at work-stations, exercise machinery.  There is an air reclamation plant that looks more modern than anything I have ever seen, but flushing toilets, which lead via brass pipes into a garden hung out of one side of the station with a huge dome overhead, and lights which I soon discover are dispensing a healthy dose of UV to plants which, well we’ll just say they are overgrown and leave it at that.

The rest of the station is mad with brass and wood, it looks like the inside of a steam age machine.  There are little handles which turn to activate functions which are not always clear.  The nice for the computes are complex affairs with bar at the top and side tracing the position of smoothly running but mechanical pointers.  I see the screens regularly turn into mush as some function is worked out, sometimes with little square remaining in corners where things that need constantly displaying reside, and once I see Ellie dip her finger into the scree and move something from somewhere to somewhere.  I reach and poke at a screen.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”  I pause and look over. “I’m a programmer by trade, ” she says, “I know how to hack the machine.”  I put my hand behind my back.

I spend some time looking out the window again.  I have been very introspective for the last few months, but this is not a good trait in my profession, well, one of my professions.  I realise something for the first time, that all the emotional energy that I would otherwise put into life, and that would interfere with my killing.  I don’t feel like that belongs to me any more.   I’m not sure who I am any more.

I was someone who killed for a living, professionally.  I have been employed by corporations and governments, small and large.  I kill cleanly and quickly, leaving no trace of my presence and existence, until now.  I have made sure that the widows and orphans of those I kill are well provided for, and I don’t kill anyone powerless.  I do not regard myself as a common murderer.  That is for street people.

I write romantic novels of such passion and depth that I am called on to write more every month.  I use a front-woman to sign for me, she, I am famous.  And we are famously recluse.  I tell my neighbours that I am an author and they leave me alone, most of the time.  I have a barbecue in summer, and a foursome for bridge, when I am at home.  I live in a modest house, because I have need for anything more.

Ellie is listening to my history.  She nods sagely as we are sitting and eating, she has found supplies, all dried food and vacuum packed, she says is is years old, but it will be ok.  She has done remarkable things with it.

I have many questions, so many, but my first is simple.

“Where are we?”

_________________

A long, really long, conversation ensues.

We ‘re aboard a space station, void ship in 1929.  Verne tried his bullet to the moon almost eighty years ago, it mashed the original astronauts flat and earned Verne a turn in jail for “reckless endangerment.”  When he came out he was a changed man, secretive, reclusive and, apparently, educated in explosives and charges.  His second experiment put a man in orbit about the earth and returned him safely.  Verne was hailed a hero, and the French were thus the first people in space.  The British soon followed, not wanting their cross channel rivals to gain a march on them, and with the 10 year delay due to Verne’s sentence, and some investigations on the part of the British Secret Service, a second manned flight was launched from outside Birmingham shortly after the first flight in 1867.  In the next ten years the Empire launched no less than sixty flights, compared to France’s three, and Verne died in 1905 a broken man, his dream dashed by a government that didn’t care.

The Empire prevailed by dogged persistence.  When the Russian and the Germans both launched disastrous but instructive missions, Britain stepped into high gear and built in a few short years a space station that would justifiably allow them to claim dominion of space.  The “Void Ships” cast into space, and soon reached the moon, launched from this space station and thus needing little of the massive investment in launch mass that it appears in my time, is required.

Except that this is not my time, or before my time.  Ellie explains that it is more likely that I have been “side-slipped”, because travelling into the past is simply not possible.  It seems that times do not always align, though this may be an accident of the calendar.  There is no way to tell.

I listen to this story with growing incredulity, the only reason I have to believe it is that I’m sitting here, tapping my fingers on the wooden surface of a table in space.

“How does the gravity work?”  I ask.

I didn’t know this, but moving things acquire mass.  If they are moving very fast, they acquire a lot of mass.  We’re sitting on top of spinning plates, which somehow are frictionless, totally frictionless, which are spinning so that portions of them are moving very quickly, nearly speed of light quickly, powered by our occasional exposure to the sun and cosmic radiation.  I press for details, but she is no a physicist, she’s a programmer, and I get nothing further.

I try for the important to stuff, why am I here?

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

“What do you mean?”

“We are supposed to be down there.”  I think about this, it does not seem an attractive prospect, but there is a prize here, and I must stay focused.

“Why?”

“Because we need to you to kill someone.”

[more]

We dress quickly.

It’s cold beyond words, I can feel my extremities turning blue as we dress, and I find thick gloves in the trunk.  The girl is with us, and she is turning blue also, but she seems to be doing so slowly, and is much more active than Sweet and I even after we have gotten dressed.  She is running around the room opening doors and cupboards, and after a short search she calls out, her breath puffing and crystallizing in the freezing air.

“Here, come and get these on.”  I look up and I happen to be looking out of a window, which almost kills me, because the shock of it is so great that I just stand there, freezing to death.  Sweet pulls me away,

“Not now Jessop, you’ll die.”  And she clamps her hand over her mouth to stop herself coughing.  The girl is already clambering into the back of a, of a, well, space suit.  It looks a lot like an old Russian model, with a single door in the back and room to move, but there are a few differences.  One is that there is a script on the suit that I don’t recognise at all, and the other is that there is a big red button on the front with an arrow pointing to it, which the girl hits, and then comes towards me grabbing another suit and shoving it at me.

“Get this on you fool,” She says, “Time for amazement later, you’re dying.”  And it’s true, I am.  Sweet has shed the dress again and climbed inside a suit and sealed it and she is also coming towards me with the intention of getting me in one.  I’m not adverse to the idea and I let them shove me in, seal me up and slap the button.

The suit immediately warms up.

____________

I return to amazement.  I review the events in my head, I seem to recall a snowfield, a damp; not this place, and then we were thrown, I remember seeing a missile, but it couldn’t have been right?  Or we would be dead.

We were very nearly dead anyway.

The suit warms up my toes and fingers slowly.  I turn to see at last what I thought I saw, but did not believe.  Sweet and the girl are already looking.

It is a large window, in panels, I can see the glass is thick, inches thick.  Outside two contrasting scenes, one the night of the sky, stars twinkling at the edge; the other is the bright curve of the planet below us, covered in white, covered in snow.

___________________

There is a crackle on the radio.

“Hello? Is this working?  Can you hear me?”  One of the other spacesuits is pointing to it’s ear, fat gloved hand moving awkwardly.  I nod, then, realising the futility of this, I draw my hand out of the sleeve and start to fit the suit to me, there are buckles and straps that fit it to my shoulders and waist so that I don’t rattle around in it.  There is a smell of leather inside, and I begin to observe the immediate environment.

The suit is outfitted like as if some mad Victorian inventor has been let loose in it.  There are flexible hoses, brass switches, incongruously covered in a fine film of plastic where meant to be tongued or nudges with the face, but plenty of room to remove my feet and hands.  The arms and legs fill with air bags when I insert them and when I withdraw the air bags collapse.  There doesn’t seem to be an air tank, and I worry about this, then I realise that this is also futile, because if the suit were not working I would be dead already.

There are tiny brass labels, and I see that they are in English.  This seems odd to me as well, but I do not have time to ponder it because the girl has come over and touched her helmet on mine.  I can just hear her yelling at me and asking if my radio works.  I look for the controls and find a little needle meter and a switch which just switches the system on.  I test it and hear the last of her yelling as she realises that I have got it to work.

“I’m Ellie.”  She says by way of introduction.  ”I thought I was going mad seeing you all the time in the mirror.”

“Me too.”

“But we’re not.”

“No.”

There is a pause.  I consider my situation. I’m in a spacesuit in an orbital satellite, looking at a planet which is more or less, apart from a band around the a equator, covered in snow and ice.  It occurs to me that I’m not floating.

“I’m not floating, and we’re not spinning.”

“It’s later than you think.”

I don’t know what that means, and I’m not sure what I’m doing here at all.  I’m mad, my mind has snapped, and she is a figment of my imagination.

But how far back does that go?  This suit is heavy, really heavy, that seems real.

Sweet is a new person, she could be in my head.

But Ellie, I have lived with her for months in the mirror.  Here, she seems real.

I’m unsteady on my feet again.  I have to sit, to think.

I can’t think.

It’s not real.

_________

“It’s real, or we’re sharing a dream.”  I look up.  ”It’s real, because this is not my place either.”

“Is it not?”

“No, it’s hard to explain.”

“I bet.”  She reaches up and pats me on the shoulder awkwardly, there is a little kick from that part of the suit.

“What has Sweet got to do with it?”

“I don’t know, you’d have to ask her.  I’m not even sure who she is, I was just expecting you.”

We turn and walk towards Sweet’s spacesuit which has not moved in ten minutes or so, realising that we have not heard from her.  We raise the sun shield and look in as best we can, her lips are moving slowly and she is blue, very blue.  Ellie catches on before I do.

“Shit the heating unit has failed.  She’s been cooling down all this time.”  She lumbers off to to the rack where another suit hangs, it is the last one.  Dragging it off the stand she lays it down and un-dogs the door.  ”We have to take a chance now.  Get out.”  We undo our doors, and cold hits, worse than jumping in icy water, but we need to be mobile to get Sweet out of her suit.  My hands turn immediately icy and my breath steams so that it is hard to see.  I notice Ellie keeping her moth tight shut, turning her lips in to protect them, and I do the same.  It’s already too cold to move really, and I have trouble knocking the  catches open, I dare not grip them.  Each breath feels like ice in my lungs.  Everything is going dark and I see Ellie gesturing as she carries Sweet from one suit to the other and I get back into my suit and lock the door.  I want to breath deeply, but some instinct keeps me from doing this until the air warms a little.  By the time I recover, I see that Ellie is climbing back into her suit.  She is not the least bit blue.

The suit decides that I need some medical treatment and I feel a needle in my buttocks as it injects something into me.  I can’t avoid it and I don’t try.  Whatever it is acts to restore me, because I feel like I can breather properly again at last.  Ellie is looking at me.

“You passed out there for a while, ” she says, “you’re a lot more delicate than I thought.”  I just look.  ”You’re going to need some help.  But first, we have to get out of here.”

She is obviously an expert at this place, because she starts to waddle around and check things which I have no idea about, circuit board, computer systems, tanks, other things that are obscure, including at one point, a soft toy which she examines minutely before replacing it with crocodile clips into a computer system.  The bear seems to wink at me as it goes in the cupboard, I’m no longer prepared to dismiss this as an illusion, but I can’t deal with it, so I ignore it.

After a while, she seems prepared to switch things on.

Lights come on, it’s a wonderland.  I’m scared to touch anything.

She hasn’t talked much, and I have not wanted to interrupt her, but now, I feel it is time to know some things.

“What is this place?”

“Oh, I suppose, you’re briefing wasn’t very good was it?”

“I’ve spent the last six months, I think, on a tug.”

“Right.”

“So…”

“Well in that case, welcome on board Her Imperial Majesties Orbiting Void Ship, The Hesperus.”

[more]

She is real.  She is real. She is real.

How can this be?  What has been happening to me?

Help me.

Help me.

Help me.

Help.

Me, me, me, me, me, me me me….

…

_________

I come to and Hicks is sitting on the edge of the bunk with a glass of water in his hand.  In deference to my condition he offers it to me first.

“We think you’ve been contacted.  What happened?”  I look at him numbly for a moment and take a sip.

“You’re a bit of a bastard, Hicks, if you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about.”

“Girl in the mirror.”  I throw the water over him.

I’m not sure why I did that.  I’m angry enough to want to punch him.  He takes a hankie out of his pocket and wipes his face.  ”She’s having an influence already I see.  You need to resist that.”

“So, are you going to tell me what is going on?”

“Briefing in an hour.”  He moves to rise, but I grab him, he merely looks down at my hand, but I don’t let go.

“Now, Hicks.” I can him him three different ways from here, all of them crude, but my curiosity gets the better of me.  ”You’re a liar Hicks!” I’m shouting suddenly, “You told me, you told me…”  I pause.  What has he told me, nothing, only that I have to be on board.  He reaches casually down and pinches my hand, and involuntarily I let go.  I sag on to the bunk.

“I told you nothing.  I told you nothing because I cannot lie.”  I look at him blankly.

“What are you talking about Hicks?  You’re a psychologist, you could be the best liar in the world.”  I rub my hand which gradually starts to come back to life.  I realise that Hicks was never out of control. He could have killed me three different ways, or thirty.

“Because I could be the best liar in the world, I cannot.  Life is too complicated and I can’t keep track of lies.  In any event, lies make me less trustworthy.  I need you to trust me.  Make a choice.  You either trust me, and obey; or your life ended in that Hong Kong fall.  Think about it.  You have less than an hour. Meet me on the bridge.”

I shower, hot and good.  It’s hard to think, it seems like a conspiracy.  I’m confused again, I thought I’d got on track, but now I’m confused again.

A rating comes to take me to the bridge ten minutes before the appointed time, and it takes exactly that long to get there.  Behind the complicated control room there is a meeting room, much simpler with a large wooden table.  Sat around it are the Captain, Lieutenant Sweet, Charles and Hicks.  Hewey and Dewy are there too, standing to a rough attention on the inside of the door.

Charles and Hicks have folders open in front of them.  I sit.  Hicks commences.

“The, uh, other side, has no-one like you, but they have a problem.  A political problem, and a humanitarian problem.  You’re going to solve it for us.”

I wait.  Nothing further is forthcoming, I’m being pressured to speak.  I speak.

“I’m only qualified to help in one way.”  I say, “and there are caveats.  I don’t leave the innocent without any means of support.”

“We noticed,” says Hicks.  ”That’s why you have been chosen, by both sides.”

“So it’s real.”

“Yes it’s real.”

“And I’m not going mad.”

“You might me.  No guarantees.”  He turns a page and pulls out a sheet.  There is a hesitation, a brief glance around, and then he pushes the sheet to glide across to me.  ”That’s your target.”

I study the picture.  It’s not a photograph, but a fine drawing, finer than any I have seen before, giving an almost photo-realistic effect; it’s of an old man, he looks like King Arthur, a doublet, hose, a codpiece for goodness sake.

“A fairytale.”

“The past.  Not ours.”  I look sharply at him.  Sweet speaks.

“The girl is, as far as we can tell his descendant, but he lived almost five hundred years ago.  You have to kill him.”

“Then she will die, never have existed.”

“No, she exists, she will exist, with another to replace him.”

“That isn’t possible.”

“You will see, Jessop, that what is possible is beyond your ken,” she says curtly.  ”You must do this thing.  Since you will be beyond our control you must do it willingly.”

“Not totally beyond.”  Says Hicks.  She looks at him.  The Captain rises and moves to a filing cabinet.  He coughs apologetically.

“You’ve been ordered to go with him, Sweet.”  She looks shocked, I guess she was not expecting it.  I get a little warm glow inside.  ”He’s not fully stable.” Thanks. “And Charles and Hicks  think someone should be with him.  That’s you.”  So saying he pulls out a file with all the markings of secrecy on it, and flops it down in front of her.  I can just see as she opens it that it is a single sheet of paper with a letter, or I assume, orders,  on it.  Her face is like thunder now, but she pulls in her obvious irritation.

“A little time to prepare wouldn’t have gone amiss, Sir.”  The Captain sits down again.

“I realise that.  We’ll forward on a communique to the relevant people about your continued absence.”

“Don’t tell them I’m dead, Sir, or I will have to take steps on my return.”  He holds up a placating hand.

“I’m aware of your history, Sweet.  I can assure that it will be handled,” He glances over at Charles and Hicks, “sensitively.”

“Yes, Sir.  If you’ll excuse me then, I am aware of the mission, but I have some personal preparation to do.”  The Captain nods, and she comes to attention and salutes him, which he casually returns.

“What about me,” I say.

“You have no family, in fact you are not officially alive.”

“And you want me to kill this fellow.”

“Yes.”

“I’m dreaming.”

“No.”

“Then how do I get there?”  Hicks nods at the Captain.

“Come with me.”

We descend in to the bowels of the ship again after the Captain gives some orders in the control room.  The way is long, and I realise that we have had to work around another large space in the ship.  We come to a door, guarded by more of the sailor with their sense of humour surgically removed, and the Captain shows them a pass, as do Charles and Hicks.  They do not challenge me in any way.

The door that they are guarding is at least thirty feet high, I wonder how they can even have room for it in the ship, and then in the gloom I note that is is suspended in mid air with hydraulic beams support it.  They are not moving at all at the moment.  It’s at this point that I notice the ships movement seems damped, we’re not moving along with the waves, or even up and down as much.  It feels very strange, and I get a sense of being out of reality again.  Charles puts his hand on my arm.

“It’s a special ship, think of it as a giant tug.”

I look at this gigantic door, it is reinforced for stiffness in every way, there are triangular constructs over every inch of its surface.  When the guards operate the opening mechanism, the door does not open, but the hydraulic part it a away from the other side of what I will soon learn is a cube, and pull it smoothly up while a crossing gantry extends from our side.  I hadn’t even realised that there was a gap.

When the door starts to rise, I see that the floor is shone to a mirror shine and light pours out.  It does not take long for me to realise that the floor is a mirror, as the walls and ceiling.  The whole thing is a giant cube of mirrors.  We see ourselves reflected again and again we stand there.

The guards require us to step into soft soled outer shoes as we go to cross the gantry, and we walk within.

I can honestly say that I have never been more disoriented in my life, and that include falling to my death, practically.

After a while I get tired of the sensation of falling that I get, and actually look around.  There are some holes in the mirrors.  Hicks sees me looking.

“Well done.  They are for alignment.”  He nods tot he outside, and a little mechanism start whirring, the holes are filled with glass, which disappears.  ”Don’t ask me how they make it work, that’s for boffins who know about light.”  I walk over, I can’t see a join or distortion.  It is this too that makes me realise that there is no distortion in the mirrors.  I can see reflections of myself from where I am.  Strangely I don’t see her.

Lieutenant Sweet appears in the doorway.  She has a large case with her, on wheels, which have been absolutely silent on the floor.

“I’m ready Sir.”

“We’re not.”  The Captain gestures and one of the guards come forward.  ”The infirmary.”  Hicks looks surprised.  ”I don’t care what you say Hicks,” he says, “this man is getting immunised.”

“I might remind you, Captain,” he puts some emphasis on the word, “that I am in charge of this mission.”

“That might be, I’m sorry, that is so, you are, but this is my ship, and on my ship we do not send men into battle without the proper equipment.”  Hicks holds his hands up up in submission.  ”He’ll be quite well immune once he gets there.”  The guard has been watching, and Hicks carefully does not catch his eye.

“Your ship, Captain.”  The guard gestures and we start to walk away.  I hear behind me..

“You can report me for insubordination, Sir, if you so wish.”

“No, Captain, I would be more worried about you if you didn’t care…”

The immunisations take some time, the old Doctor is a southern gentleman and I wonder how he came to be serving in the British Navy.  He talks nearly all the time about how medicine has advanced, but that the old skills are lost.  It’s a familiar refrain.

__________

We in the mirror room once more. Sweet has opened her bag.  I see that there are winter clothes, serious winter clothes, within, some for me and some for her.  She strips her dress uniform off without being the least little bit self conscious.  I look and then look away.

“Look now, if you’re going to look, because it might be your last, or worse, you might have to rely on knowing me.”  That wakes me up from my sudden shyness, which is in the event an unfamiliar action on my part.  I look.

She is frankly very attractive in that trim sort of way that graphic novel fantasise about, there isn’t the least trace of fat about her and the swell of her breasts seems just too large for her waist and even her hips.  Her neck is classically long and as she turns about once I catch a glimpse of a rose tattoo on her shoulder.  ”Remember the tat.  We think they don’t have that.”

“Have you been there before?”

“No, but have had some preliminary, well, contact.”  She dresses, thick woollen tights, blue, old fashioned dress over a layer of under-dress.  Then a jumper that comes almost down to her knees, and a modern Arctic winter coat with three layers, and gloves, and goggles, darkened.  My clothes are similar, except the dress, I have thick double knitted hose and a tunic with layers underneath and similar Arctic gear.  I notice that she puts a flask into her coat, and I find one and do the same.  ”It’s not a drink.”  She says.  ”Get undressed.”  I look at the Captain and Hicks, they nod.  Hicks clears his throat.

“We’ll, er, leave you to it  then.”  He says.  ”Good luck.”  He shakes her by the hand before she is indecently undressed again, and so does the Captain.  They reach out to me, and I accept Hicks hand slowly, then the Captains’ hand too.

“Hicks, ” I call as the the gantry starts to pull back. “Tell Charles I said, e4-e5, check.”  He nods, and the door starts coming down.

____________

It’s forty-five minutes later.

“You’re just not getting this are you?  If you don’t dress in less than three minutes, you’re going to die, of hypothermia.  End of story.  Do it again.”  She’s looking pretty cross, and no amount of nudity can distract from this.  Beside, I’m used to her how, and she to me.  She was a bit horrified by my network of scars, at first.

“OK, ok,” I say, and finally, ten minutes later I satisfy her.  I can dress from naked in under three minutes.

I have stayed looking at non-reflecting things as much as I can.

It’s eerie.

____________

We’re standing in the middle of the room, I realise for the first time that Sweet is wearing a wig, and has no hair anywhere, she notices, “It’s a side effect of the immunisation.”  We’re close together and the case, fully packed now is just behind us.  I see the little post open and light glinting from each, but I can’t see a beam, so it must a be a laser.  The room rocks a little, and it’s quite a start ot hear the Captains voice coming over a speak from one of the holes.

“We’re at station keeping.”  I get a sensation of movement, then it stops, and I realise that the ship must now be moving around us.  I give in and look properly in the mirrors at this woman and I reflected into infinity, every flaw in me picked a million, billion times as a I stand there naked and cold.  Unexpectedly I feel her hand slip into mine, and I find myself surprised to be returning the squeeze.

“They said you don’t like to touch, it’s in your profile, but I’m betting you’re scared, or going to be.”  She says, I go to loosen my grip, “So am I.”  I tighten it again, and as if this is some signal the mirrors suddenly start reflecting another reality, the laser light sparkles in lines as it catches some dust or smoke or mist, and I see us shift about, I sway, but Sweet stays upright and hangs on to me, pulling me into position.  I see the girl, and even though I’m expecting it now it’s a shock.  She is holding a notice saying “STAND BY” in five foot high lettering.

We experience a moment of acceleration, very slight, but then we are in the middle, as far as I can make out, of the cube.

The worlds collide and part again as the room struggles to align with the world reflected in the mirrors, the lasers spark and stine as they burn the air, and the room moves.  There’s a wind, and more light, and I realise for the first time that there has never been light in here, so where has it come from?  The lasers burn and bur now in each corner of the room and I see the room wave about, the mirrors moves trying to align the red light with another green light.  They seem to cancel each other out as we hang suspended in mid air, and there is a moment, no not a moment, a microsecond when the lights all align and the holes are filled perfectly.

I cannot move or breathe and yet this is not alarming, it is a moment in time where I live, remembering everything about my life everything.  The world turns white, and it is cold, cold cold cold cold cold…

…and we are thrust into snow, fine white powdery snow, I feel it, it is real and as far away from the room of mirrors as we could get suddenly.  I am gasping with cold and Sweet is urging me to get dressed, but I still see the room of mirrors, and I know she does too.  The girl is there shouting something, but I cannot hear her above the wind and the roaring of the sea and something else.  The girls tries and tries to tug me, get me to act, and then there is the explosion, the sound of glass shattering, a sound like the end of the world and Sweet reaches out for me as the girl grabs my arm and the noise is intense, unbearable, loud so loud and I see the missile just before it explodes and then we are thrust forward again, and I feel hardness under my knees, and it is colder than I have ever known.

[more]

That tension that I have been detecting comes to a head.

We’re well out of sight of land and have been for some days, I happen to be on deck.  There’s a large grey ship out there, on the horizon and I can tell that we are approaching it.  I say nothing but help as the nets are pulled in, the above crew are particularly cheery and light as we approach, but I see nothing to be happy about.  It’s a military vessel and it looks like we chasing it for a good while, but then it begins to turn.  Some signals from below are obviously being exchanged, and I see our little radar stop moving round and round, instead it takes up a tracking position that varies minutely as the other massive grey ship starts to loom.  It looks like any conventional aircraft carrier, but then part of the bow opens as we approach, and to my surprise there is a dock within.

The deck crew lounge about watching the docking procedure, all except the Steering Master and the Pilot who are very active in the control room.  Engines I didn’t know we had start up, and I realise that this is a fully equipped tug as well, our position held to within a foot as we approach the dock within the ship.

The sense of size of the vessel is communicated to me thoroughly for the first time as it encloses us, the bow doors closing before we are fully engaged.  Some of the below crew come up to see the final moments of the docking.  I see the crew all stand away from the sides as the final seconds approach, and I do the same.  I’m almost knocked off my feet as a large clanking sound confirms that we are engaged in some sort of cradle, and a gangplank winds out from the dockside.  I hear the sound of vigourous pumping from below and see that the seawater is being pumped out.

Hicks comes from below.  ”With me,” he says curtly, as he strides past towards the jetty.  It’s unnervingly high and narrow, if you’re subject of that sort of thing, but as we cross it he slows down, the Captain of the massive vessel is approaching with a rating who is laden with clipboards and a case.  She is wearing heels, that seems wrong from what I know of military personnel.  Hicks is all business, however.  I find out something else I didn’t know about him.

“Admiral Hicks.  Permission to come aboard.”

“Captain Tomlinson.  Pleased to meet you sir.  Permission granted.  If you’d care to sign the boarding forms and service agreements…?”  He gestures to the rating, who is looking at me with interest.  She sees me glance down again.

“I have flat feet, and I can run 100 Metres in 12.3 seconds in these, does that answer your question?”  I nod, dumbly.  The Captain seems to notice me for the first time.

“Is this him?”  Hicks nods, “Yes, he hasn’t been told yet.”

“Well, we’ve got everything ready.”  Hicks looks at me.

“Just wait.”  I wait.

We’re taken up through levels of the ship by the Captain, his rating, introduced to us a Lieutenant Sweet, I don’t move a muscle in my face, and Hicks evidently knows her, and we are joined by two large sailors in dress uniform and, notably guns.  Pistols to be exact, two, each.  They also look like they have no sense of humour.  At all.

As we shift places in the inevitable single file, I am next to Lieutenant Sweet once more, she looks at me appraisingly.

“Not a twitch.  You pass.”  I try not to be too cool about it.

“I might be faking it.”  She raises an eyebrow, black like her hair.

“If you’re faking it, you still pass, because you’re willing to try.”  She steps up the ladder, which is entirely unsuited for her in heels and the skirt of her dress uniform.  I wait with my eyes lowered.  She looks back down.  ”And you still pass, because nearly every man looks once, with the notable exception of Hewey and Dewey there, but they are disciplined.”

“Thank you Ma’am.”  They say.

“Do come along, Sweet.”  I hear the Captain say.  ”We’re pushed for time.”

“Yessir.”  She says rapidly, and is all business again.

“Though I’m glad you approve.”  He murmurs as she takes is side once more.  Hicks is next to me again.

“Stop chatting up the crew.”  I raise my hand in supplication, but he has moved on.

We’re bought to cabins, small, naturally, but privileged.

“Prepare yourself, ”  says the Captain.

“He still hasn’t been briefed,” says Hicks.  The Captain says nothing, just nods.  I’m left in the Cabin.  There is a basin and a mirror.   look in it wondering what I’ll see.  I see her.

It’s a shock, such a shock, I’m not ready.  I have seen her so many times and she has always always reflected my movements, reflected me, as she were me, she has invaded my sense of identity, my sense of self and I have lived with it, as though she is something in my head reflecting some inner me that is not available otherwise.  I have gone months without questioning it, just accepted that this is who I am, I see things in the mirror that are not there.  I have done irrational things because I have not been sure, I have never been sure.

Now, now though I see something that is independent, I think it’s independent.  I think.

She is holding a sign that I am not.

It says “Prepare yourself.”

[more]

It is two days after the Hicks incident.  I am wandering around the ship at a loose end.

I’m strong, hale, hearty.  Charles and Hicks have seen to that.  I’ve never been as fit.

I keep my distance from people again, aware that Hicks is watching me now.  I have let people in emotionally because I have spent some time here, but I have sense that things are about to happen.  An unrest is about the place, a certain tension.

We have come into more northern climes, passing first Malaysia, Singapore, the Indian Ocean; many days without sight of land.  We pass Madagascar, and call in at the southern tip of Africa for supplies, and I get the impression, information.  I stay on the boat.

Working our way up the west coast, we have changed flags many times, we’re not challenged in any way, except once when we are warned off an oil spill from a ship that has run aground.  This seems the longest leg of our journey, we ‘re in no hurry it seems and the cause is me; I have to be on side in whatever is coming, and Hicks thinks that this is the way to get me to do it.

The girl is a constant companion in the mirror now, except when I’m shaving; she is there daily, primping herself in some way when I look up, passing her hand over her face as if feeling for something when I pass my hand over mine feeling the morning stubble.  She disappears on the next glance as I lather the soap, it’s a sign of how long we have been at sea that I am running to the bottom of the pot.

Shaving is a ritual that helps me to hang to reality, I’m not sure that here is real, but I have lived everyday as if it is, and I shave because there is a reassuring routine, I know just a day has passed because of the length of my stubble.  It seems as if it is something that I could not be fooled by, as if it is the one thing that in another reality, inside my head, doesn’t happen.  When I shave, I am marking the passage of time, the movement of one day to the next in a way that cannot be denied.  The scrape of the blade along my skin is a feeling of security, the attention to detail that is missing in a dream.  Dreams, unreality passes over the bare detail of life, visits to the head, shaving, showering.

It is shaving that is a moment of concentration, an absolution from everything else that the day has to offer.  It is a meditation on life and what has been and what is to come.  The girl is there and then she is gone while I shave, and this too is an assertion of myself and my reality.  It is a site of passage.

__________

I’m fourteen years old, and my father is teaching me to shave.  He is an anxious man, already I am taller than him, and he must look up at my faint whiskers; but I have talked to him already about shaving, and he has come to the conclusion that it is time.

We are in the bathroom, it’s cold, winter and the breezes blow in the little house.

My father is a grey little man, the epitome of a caricature of the account that he is; with one single exception, he has a shock of bright, thick, red hair.  He talks conservatively, walks and never runs, cycles to work locally, and takes lunch to work made by my mother, simply because it saves money.

I have elected to shave with a shaver, my father a lifelong wet shaver frowned at first when I said this to him, but said nothing and investigated the possibilities.  He insists that wet shaving is an essential skill that I must at some point acquire, but for now, as I begin a lifetime of hair removal, I must make my own choices.

He produces a razor, it is an expensive complicated machine, and I read the instruction manual first, as he would wish, and then listen patiently to his advice.  He guides my hand as we turn on the machine and trim the long hairs, he’s very gentle, as if I might break somehow.  I know that he is caring and concerned that I might cut myself, and so I let myself be guided through.  He turns the shaving surface around and talks about how it will pull at first, and how I must get used to the sensation, it might be uncomfortable at first.

I grip the razor and move the buzzing machine over my face, there are a few tugs, but the machine is well designed, and I feel little discomfort.  He seems happy that I have made a good job of it, and pats me awkwardly on the arm.  I have already gotten out of the habit of touching people, and this is the first real physical contact we have had for over a year.

____________

We’re near Spain now, and there is that sensation that something is about to happen again on board, I can’t put my finger on it, but the work seems a little more frenetic, the computers board busier, and the people a little more distant, focussed.  Even Charles has less time for our games, and we frequently leave them in the middle.  I help about above decks more again as the catches grow bigger despite the small nets, and we have to call into port to sell the fish.  To Hicks’ irritation we are even fined for being over quota at one point, and for a week or two we don’t even put the nets out.  This is bad for morale, and the lads spend all their time playing cards and watching films.

Hicks broods about this for a while, it’s the first sign of real moodiness I have seen in the crew, and I’m concerned about it, but eventually he gives the order the cast the nets again and the trawler resumes its’ visible work.

I learn something during this time that I had not realised.

One of the functions of the boat is, apparently, to remain undetected and at sea for as long as possible while doing, well, whatever it does.  The nets sprawl out over a considerable area, spread by something called “otter boards” which spread the net out, and we are “pelgaic” or mid-water trawling.  Our nets are specially manufactured for what turns out to be about twice the speed of even the fastest trawlers, which is why most of the time, we don’t catch many fish, and why what we do catch remain alive in the net for a long time.  Since the purpose of our vessel is to remain at sea for a long time, this arrangement is generally convenient.  But it does something else too.

It keeps submarines away.

Our nets are a hazard, and they stay away because we are heavily disguised by the sound of so many fish, and a hazard to navigation as well.  We are well disguised.

I’m beginning to have a strange admiration for this team and their preparedness and and the design of this vessel.

I realise that this too is part of Hicks plan, to get me on board.  To get me of my own free will to join whatever it is he has planned.

And since my memory has not returned, I realise that this is my life now, that Hong Kong is six months and more behind be, but also a lifetime behind me.

I don’t like being someone else’s man, but maybe I am not being that.  Maybe I am merely being guided gently, looked after because gentle guidance is the only way to get someone to follow you, truly, to commit, to be there for you, because you are there for them.

Maybe it’s like learning to shave with your father, and not being in pain.

[more]

Life settles down and I build a relationship with people that I have never had before.  It’s not comfortable for someone who does what I do, but it is comforting.  I get a sense of what it would be like to have a family.

This is a new experience for me, and as we sail at about ten knots through right water and smooth, I undergo mood swings.  One in particular is of note.

I have written a note to the girl in the mirror in an attempt to take make some sense of my world, it says, “What is happening?”  But she has, inevitably the same question for me.

I know that Hicks remains armed at all times, and with my strength and health improved by sea air and work, it is but the work of a second to dip my hand into his holster one day.  I remember this day, the sea is cam and the sky is blue, azure blue, and hot.  I’m shaking.

Hicks just looks at me as I point the gun at him.  The only other person who takes notice is Charles.  Hicks is completely calm, and goes to move off, as if I’ve just borrowed a pen without permission, rather than looking at me as if I have just taken his gun.

“I’ll kill you, I swear, ” I say, “I will, and it will hurt.”  I’m shaking.

“Ok.”  he looks completely calm, I find that rather annoying.

“Turn this boat around!”

“Sure.”  He unclips a mic to the bridge and gives the order.  The Steering Master complies without complaint.  I’m confused, there isn’t a hint of impending action from Hicks or Charles.  Charles is reading a book, and hasn’t looked up.

“Gimmie your gun, Agent,” I say turning my head only slightly.  He reaches into his jacket with thumb and forefinger and puts the gun on the desk in front of me, moving slowly.  He has to reach, it’s awkward.  ”Why are you guys doing what I say so readily?”  My finger is tightening on the trigger, this level of compliance is unnerving.

“Because of logic.” Hicks is unperturbed.

“Logic?”

“You’re stressed because you have not been informed about everything.  You will go through this every now and again unless you can accept your new life.  We would have left you behind.  You’ve been on board for some time now.  You know that we’re in charge.  You’re relieved of any responsibilities right now, but you rail against it because you are used to being in charge of your own life.  Try to enjoy it.

This is the longest speech I have heard from Hicks, and I cannot deny that he is right.  I could kill everyone on board, and it would make my situation no better.  In fact, it would make it considerably worse.  I put the safety on, reverse the gun and hold it out to Hicks.

“Sorry.”  Hicks shakes his head and holds his hand up.

“It’s your gun now.”  I look askance at him.  ”You have to be in charge of your life it’s true.  I’m not giving you the gun, you took, it’s your responsibility.  We have have to risk our lives on trusting you, all of us.  You’ve been able to do this anytime since you came aboard, now that you have, you’re responsible for your firearm.”

“That’s it?  No punishment?  No sanction?  No decking me now because you have to prove you’re Captain?”

“Would you respect me anymore, or would you think I still had something to prove?”

I nod.  Charles sets the pieces in the chess set in place for a new game and holds his hand out in a clear invitation.  I take the clip out of the gun and empty the chamber.  I sit and look at the board, Charles has set it up so I’m white.

I turn the board and set it so that it I’m black.  It’s the first time I’ve played black in all our games and this fact is only obvious to me now.

“Hicks,” I say in a subdued tone.  ”Can I have a holster please?”  He nods.  ”And Hicks,” He pauses from turning away, “Thanks.”  A curt, short nod again.

_______

Charles and I play for some time, it’s a slow game.  I take time to luxuriate in the pieces, the feel of the wood, the muffled click as they land and magnetically secure themselves on the board.  The board itself is large and luxorious considering the space premium on the Hesperus, I had dismissed it at first as the single allowance of one of those in charge, but I’m beginning to think that there is something more to it.

Charles concentrates on the game intently, and one of the hands brings us coffee about mid-way through, also a first. I see at last that most the hands carry a gun with them, but none of them reacted, I could have killed everyone on the deck.

Hicks reaction bothers me, there is something not right with it, not in the strange way that the girl appears in the mirror, but in another way.  He wasn’t afraid.  There is usually some fear in a face however calm, and in Hicks’ face, there was none.

“He’s a psychologist, before you ask.”  Says Charles suddenly.  It’s his first training.”  He moves a piece.  ”That’s how he knows.”

“Knows what?”  I’m old fashioned look.

“Don’t take us for fools, Jessop.  In many ways we’re all dead here, none of us have families, we can’t be blackmailed, and we’ve more or less given up personal lives to be here.  We believe in her Majesty’s Government, what it stands for, and in what we’re doing.”  He watches me as I slowly reply to his move.

“You’re not telling me that you believe in all that King and Country bullshit do you?”

“No, not as such.  I said we’re not fools, we all know there are flaws, big ones, in any government.  We’re here for personal reasons, every one of us, but we’re doing essentially, what we’re told.”

“Then all that stuff Hicks said about being my own man was bull too?”

“No, we’re our own men alright, we just serve because we think it’s right.  Because we think it is worthwhile, in the long run.”

“What do you mean in the long run?”

“I mean that our lives don’t mean much if we cannot prevent the wars, the Nukes and the Hi-Jackings.”

“I don’t see much evidence of that from the news.”

“You know how it it Jessop, you of all people know that we have to be lucky all the time, and we’re not.  That’s why we’re trying to recruit you.”

“Trying?”  I’m not sure what he means now.  I pick up a piece and wave it around in indecision, finally plonking it down poorly.

“Yes, trying.  You’re worthless to us if you’re not on board.”  I look around, pointedly.  ”Not on board with us, philosophically.  You won’t give your all.  Unless you agree with us you’re unlikely,” He picks up a piece and places it carefully on the board, “to give it your best shot.”  There is a pause as he considers the board, I’m just looking him when he speaks again.

“Check.”

[more]

Polokov is gone.

I realise shortly after how many questions he could have answered if he knows about her.  Either I’m still dreaming or she is real and I’m experiencing something other.

I get up from the hospital bed and wince in pain, this has to be real, my legs hurt.  I take a look, the scars look just like in my dream, how long have I been here?  I realise that I’m still hooked up, and unlink all the bits of plastic attached.  Withdrawing the catheter is painful, but I’m careful, I’ve heard tales.  There is beeping, a nurse comes in and starts fussing, but I’m not in the mood and blank it out while I go to the bathroom.  She is flapping about, but I say nothing; the floor is cold, but I note, very clean.

I close the door of the bathroom, and look in the mirror, not without some trepidation, but all I see is a bearded me, quite a bush too, I’ve been out for a while.  I take out the catheter in my arm as well, and run the shower.

It’s good, I have run it hot.  I notice sore spots, bed sores I assume, I’m not as gentle with my skin as I should be, I notice some larger flakes coming off.  I have been laid up for a good while, and there are other signs too, in my muscles and in my bones.

Everything aches.

When I exit the bathroom after about half an hour or so, there are two men in the hospital room.  Unfriendly men, with badges.  I look at them, then out the window, then at them.  Hong Kong skyline, British Secret Service.  I’ve never had any contact, I don’t know what to expect.  I pull on a dressing gown and sit on the bed.

“Hicks,” says the shorter one, “and Charles.”  Hicks opens his coat, taps a gun.  ”Just so you know not to try anything.”

“…” I try to speak but it turns into a cough.  Agent Charles reaches over and pours a plastic cup full of water.  In deference to my theoretical skills, he pushes the wheeled table over to me, rather than trying to hand it over.  I take a sip.

“Before you ask, I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“You were trying to shoot someone.”

“I know nothing.”

“You’re lying.”  Hicks is all business, he thinks he can bully me.  Charles is waggling his eyebrows out the window as a Chinese nurse, she rolls her eyes.

“You can’t know that, how long have I been out?”

“Twenty-Six weeks.”  I look up at him.  There must be something  in my eyes, certainly my heart is thumping, six months!  Charles engages.

“Really, yes.  Why do you think your legs healed so well?  You broke then in seventeen places.  We’re surprised you can stand.  let alone walk.”

If I wasn’t already sitting on the bed, I would have to sit now.  Hicks sniffs.

“You’re pretty professional by all accounts.  We know who you were trying to kill.  Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’re wasting out time here I see.  Well, look when you’re prepared to talk, ring this number.”  He hands me a card.  ”Escape, don’t escape, we don’t don’t care, we’ll track you down.  In the meantime, you have to deal with the Hong Kong police, and you’re too weak to run.”  They turn to leave.

“Wait.”  There is a pause.

“I’ll come with you.”

“That wasn’t on offer.”

“You have to give me something if you want information.”

“You’re in no position to bargain.”

“Then the UK Government will have have to have its curiosity unsatisfied then.”

“We’re at an impasse, good-day to you.”  A hand on the door handle.  I play my only card.

“Polokov.”

“Polokov.”  There is a pregnant pause.

“He was sent to kill me.  He left an hour ago.”

“He’s good, what did you do to him.”

“I saved him, he owed me.”

“Polokov owes no-one.”  Charles steps out the door and talks into a radio.  Forgive me, Polokov, I can’t be in the hands of the Hong Kong Police.  Foreign secret service is better.  Yeah I look like a Brit, but I was born here, my Passsport, passports say Hong Kong.  It’s China now, they take a dim view of assassination.

“He owes me, and if you want more you have to take me with you.”  Hicks looks out the window at Charles, Charles nods.

“Are you strong enough to dress yourself?”  And surprisingly, I am, though it hurts.  Everything hurts.  I’ve been lying down for most of six months.  I need something though, a pen and a piece of paper.  The girl, she’s in danger.  I write “Police coming, get out” on a sheet of notepaper I find by the bed and go into the bathroom and hold it up to the mirror.  I see her holding up exactly the same piece of paper reversed.  Damn, that means they’re coming now.  I smile at her as she smiles at me, and then I exit rapidly.

“We have to go.”  I say.  ”Now”  Charles speaks more into his radio urgently and there is a movement of people on the hospital floor, a sudden influx of black coats.  I dress, not bothering with modestly or dignity, and it is not lost on me that my clothes are black linen.

Staff are hustled out of the way, and I barely have time to don a pair of shoes before Charles and Hicks grab  me both arms and hustle me to the lift.  Hicks has a priority key and turns it before the doors have closed, and the lift plummets twenty-six floors down to the basement car park.  We move quickly to a large black Range Rover, and the rest, the rest is a car chase through narrow streets.

_________

I’m not in charge of anything right now, we have boarded a boat bound for I don’t know where.  There was a fast transfer between car and and little speed boat and a dangerous, in my view, dash out of a harbour, made all the more exciting by the sound of gunfire zipping past as a couple of the more rash constabulary decide to take pot shots at us.  The last I see of Hong Kong is an angry policeman hitting another on the jaw after removing his pistol.

The boat in contrast is quiet, it looks like an old fishing trawler, and there are even some men working it, but below is deeper than usual, and the vessel seems to hang weirdly in the water.  Once below there is an extra deck, and in this plushly appointed place, the plans of governments are carried out.  The deck is exactly six feet high.  Charles has to stoop.

“What am I doing here?”  I say, a couple of days into the journey.

“You’re an agent of Her Majesty now.  Let me ask you something, what is your name?”  I look at him blankly.  I don’t know.

I don’t know my own name.  Maybe I had a bang on the head, I can remember everything else about my life, but every time my memory  should be telling my name, it kind of slides across it, or mumbles or blurs it out.  It’s like, appropriately, a fish.  I cannot get a grip on it.  I was never much of a fisherman anyhow.  I don’t know my own name.

And how come they don’t know it, these agents?  What is going on?

“We don’t know it, because, frankly, we’ve never been cleared to hear it.  You’re just Jessop to us, that’s the pseudonym operations gave us.  We’re not even sure why we’re not allowed to know your name.”

I paused to consider this.  Only Charles and Hicks talk to me, everyone else more or less ignores me, just a nod here and there, and acknowledgement that I’m present, not invisible.

I have to wear fishing gear while above, and the crew actually fishing talk sometimes, great mugs of sweet tea handed around in a kind of gruff camaraderie at their role, what they are pretending to be doing, and I am included in that, but right now I am below, in the office, and the office guys ignore me and concentrate of their computers.

“Call me Jessop then,” I say.  ”It’s better than ‘hey you’”.  Charles and Hicks nod.

Charles is friendly, considering, and has a magnetic chess set which he shares with me.  We sit for hours playing.  We’re about matched, and as the days pass we both get better, I gather that he doesn’t get much of a game from the rest of the crew.  From time to time the watch changes, and the desks and computers are filled with other bottoms.  Little drives are removed and carefully hung around necks.  For a break some of the office staff go above decks and help out for a few days, they are treated with the same rough camaraderie as I do.  Charles and I play.

I sleep a lot.  I have tiny cabin all to myself, even with a washbasin and shaving equipment.  I avail myself of it about a week into the trip.  I have a badger hair brush, and a tub of shaving soap and a safety razor of the latest type, multi-bladed and vibrating.  I run the water until it is piping hot and work the brush into the soap after running it under the tap briefly.  I soak my beard, it’s quite bushy, and rinse it off a little.  I find some shaving oil, and work it in next to my skin, and then work the hot soap in to my face again.  I look into the mirror, my face is there, hair and all.  It’s a relief, and I turn the blade around to the trimming tool, and work under my nose, and my side burns into that pointed shape that I like.  I realise now that I should have cut it short, but it’s too late and I use the trimming tool to make a rough cut, then turn the blade to the shaving surface to finish.

It feels clean, right, as though I am reclaiming something of myself, even if I do not have my own name.  This is mine, this power, I can look clean shaven.

I look again in the bag of toiletries I have been given and see a hair trimmer.  I use it carefully, making my hair evenly and inch long all over.  I’m finished at last and am putting the trimmer and other things away when I glance up at the mirror again.

She is there, waiting, she has just finished trimming her hair too, and it looks like she has recently peeled a masque off her face, it has a little glow.  I guess that she has been doing this while I have been shaving, I wonder if she could see me all that time?  It occurs to me, finally, that she never seems surprised to see me, I wonder if that is function of the surprised look she habitually carries, her eyebrows seems to be plucked high.  I keep on forcing my self to think of them as hers.  Shaving has reinforced my identity though, and for the time being I’m assured that this is something from my inner mind.

I ignore her, and go to dinner.

________________

The day stretch in to weeks.  The crew is quiet, I have never know such a cooperative bunch of men, there are no arguments or fights, no frictions.  That seems creepy after a while, and I find myself wanting to needle them, even the upstairs crew.

It’s quickly stamped on.  Hicks has a word.

“I know you’re restless now, and because of that, you have to stay above decks for a while.  I cannot afford the disruption that you are trying to cause down here.  Do you understand?”  I nod, I get it, but I am bored and restless.  Charles and Hicks have not shared any of their plans with me, or even told me in what capacity I am to “serve”.  Everyone seems content to carry on quietly, I cannot understand it.

The upstairs crew undergo a change in attitude towards me, I’m expected to earn my keep.  They teach me to handle all the equipment over the next few weeks as we change flags and territory.  We take on fish, and soon we have to call at a port to sell out stock.  On a normal vessel we would be about half full I’m told, on the “Hesperus” we’re fit to burst.  We have to fish more though, or we look like we’re not trying, and the decks fill up.  It takes another week to sort out which port we will call at, and our contacts there.  The fish will go on the open market, we have to put up with some mocking at regular ports, but we’re out of our way now.

My strength has been building up, and my mind fully occupied as we fight the seas and the fish.  It is a fight, sometimes a fully fledged brawl out there on the sea where there is no coat to be see and the sea swells freely.  I learn that the Captain is actually Hicks, and that he is a hardened sea hand with thirty years experience at sea.  That seems strange to me, I wouldn’t have put him at a day over forty.  He certainly doesn’t look that old.  But then I think about how he moves, his assurance.  he steps through hatches where I stumble even after a month at sea, he knows when it is about to blow, and when it is about to be calm.  The upper crew and the lower crew respect him and he never raises his voice even in the most severe of gales.  The “Steering Master”, normally this would be Hicks, the crew call him “Master” and the quayside people assume he is the Captain and negotiate with him, is the guiding hand, the crew trust him, but the true Master of the vessel is Hicks.  Hicks trusts the Steering Master too, and never interferes with him, but relieves him regularly, and asks his advice about all matters above decks, and occasionally below too, but it is clear that below is not the Steering Master’s domain.

I see her in the mirror regularly, but there is nothing happening that I can see otherwise, and for a while, the worries of the world recede, and I actually begin to enjoy being challenged by the fishing, even after we call into port, and the chess once more when Hicks decides that I will not disturb the strange harmony of the vessel.

[more]