• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Anstaar appreciated his levity. She watched him, dextrous fingers skimming through reams of information he couldn't possibly be taking in (could he?), face gripped by fierce concentration. It was clear that the staff headquarters were proving a disappointment to him. She doubted they would find any answers here, and told him so.

'There must be some clue... some reason for all this.'

'You're getting distracted, Doctor,' sighed Anstaar. 'Maybe there just isn't a reason.'

' "The universe is nothing but a functional chain of causality at every level, governed by the oldest and simplest laws." I was taught that when I was young,' he said, and smiled wistfully, his eyes looking into the distant past.

'My tutor was the most attractive person I've ever seen, but just didn't get it.'

'Get what?' asked Anstaar, a little uncertainly.

'That however much people try to take the mystery out of things, they can't diminish wonder -' he plonked a black box on a large desk - 'beauty -' he slipped a datacube into place -'and discovery.'With a flourish, he activated the file, and a small icon glowed into life on the cube. He smiled at Anstaar, and she smiled back. Then he sat down and began to read, scrolling down through page after page of documentation. 'It's a kind of log, a diary, kept by the director's assistant. His face became grim. 'Judging by the dates of these records, I'd say this asylum was founded around thirteen years ago.

The patients here were psychotic, but not all that many were criminals. It would seem that this race considered anyone not functional in society to be substandard and they were deported. Apparently the atmosphere on Hirath is stimulating to certain areas of the mind in some subjects -'

'Is that why I keep remembering everything of late in such detail?' Anstaar stared quizzically at him.

'Do you? Quite probably, then,' confirmed the Doctor. 'Anyway, this was to be the first of many such insane settlements on Hirath if there was any proven gain in the patients to be had.'

'And was there?' It was weird, she realised, looking at the patch of sunshine in the dingy room behind the Doctor, never moving, frozen as if painted on...

'Unproven. I'm afraid the nature of this settlement changed somewhat. The director's assistant was a miserable soul by all accounts, and that's not mentioning his appalling grasp of grammar -'

'Yes, Doctor,' interrupted Anstaar, 'but moving on...'

'Moving on, his entries suddenly stop. Just like that. Not on any great discovery, or revelation, they simply stop, around five years ago. They recommence months later, but the tone is different... more euphoric sometimes, then completely flat.' He looked around him.'Lifeless.'

Anstaar came and squatted on the floor, looking up at him. 'Some sort of narcotic control, do you think?'

'Or an implant. During the gap in records, I think it's fair to say something pretty monumental happened. Wait a moment.'

Anstaar felt her heart beat faster. 'What?' she breathed, bracing herself for yet more impossible news.

'The patients found something during excavation work to build more facilities.' The Doctor seemed almost sinister, his stern face illuminated in the gentle blue of the datacube screen. 'They found it some distance over there.' He waved a hand in the opposite direction to which they had arrived.

'Could that be the source of the leakage, I wonder?'

'What does the last entry say?' Anstaar got up and looked over the Doctor's shoulder. Her coarse dark hair tickled against his nose, and he sneezed noisily, making her jump.

'Hold on,' he muttered, looking at her a little reproachfully. He found the end of the document, and read blankly: '"Nashaad has metal legs."'

Anstaar giggled despite herself. 'What?'

'Simply that, at the end of a long description about the odd dreams he's been having.' He turned to her. 'How would supplies, new patients, new staff arrive here?'

Anstaar shrugged. 'There are safe flight paths leading through the time