Chronoreg
Daniel Sernine
(Excerpt from chapter 3, p. 47-53)
It's past midnight when Blackburn wakes up, totally disoriented. He doesn't recognize the luxurious decor illuminated by the night light, and he literally needs several minutes to remember where he is. By the large open window, he can see a charcoal grey helicopter passing by, almost in silence, visible in the night mostly because of reflections on its polished fuselage and lights in its cabin. A prototype, he immediately thinks, staring at the ultramodern contours that he's never seen, and for a moment he thinks he is in some test facility's headquarters. Then he sees the craft almost leap up, the only noise being the swishing air. Only when he recognizes Lavilia Carlis sitting near the pilot in the cockpit's red light does he remember his inglorious arrival at Cayre Villa.
Where can she go like this, in such a hurry, and who are the people sitting in the back? But Blackburn has other concerns.
He's not really fit and fresh. However, he only has a faint headache now and something between queasiness and raging hunger in the pit of his stomach. An icy shower dispels his feeling of hangover. When he gets out of his room, cleanly dressed, he knows precisely what he wants to do.
There is another party tonight at the millionaire's. No pretence at "intimacy," this time: the guests arrive in droves. Blackburn wanders among them, looking for the occasional majordomo. He finally spots one who is assigning tasks to a few servants.
"Tell me, my good fellow..."
"Señor is rested?"
"Yes, thank you. Say, do Señor Cayre and Señora Carlis often give this kind of party?"
"Often."
"All kinds of people come here."
"As you can see."
"They drink a lot, they use drugs."
"Oh you know, Señor..." the majordomo says, without committing himself.
"I don't know anyone here. If you could show me the señor or the señora who's in charge of..."
He slips a banknote in the majordomo's breast pocket.
"You will find her at the opera, I believe."
"The opera?"
"If the señor will follow me..."
The servant leads him to a large, dimly lit living room dominated by a big specialized holovision projector; the massive decks are disguised to resemble the stage and border of an old theatre. The image is the most perfect one he has ever seen, in its precision, fidelity and stability. The sound is exquisite. The work being projected is something from the classical repertoire, Verdi, perhaps, and the dusky red velvet seats imitate those of an opera house.
Once past his fascination for the gadget - the whole thing must have cost fifty thousand dollars - Blackburn goes to the man who has been discreetly pointed out to him. It's the intermission, as it happens, and people are standing up. Blackburn reaches the man.
"Chronoreg. Do you think there's any left some place?"
"Chronoreg! The little that's left must have become an object of mad speculation."
"Who would want any, anyhow?" intervenes a young woman who seems to be with the man. "Go back for a few hours to the past, what would be the point? Unless you have lived an especially successful night of love."
"Everybody knows the going back is only a side-effect, my dear," the pusher retorts. "Chronoreg is used with hashish to obtain a feeling of eternity," he adds, looking intently at Blackburn as if testing his knowledge.
Blackburn knew that too, although he'd never had the opportunity to try that combination. Some say people killed themselves, once confronted with this eternity, which is subjectively real for the user. But what he wants is not eternity, it's one small moment of the past, a very small, well placed moment, just before the fateful turn in events at Comitan.
"Could we talk a little about this? A business conversation, if you will."
Piqued, the young woman goes away, as Blackburn opens the closest door: Señor Cayre's library.
"Ah, from modern to ancient," the pusher comments. "Señor Cayre has refined tastes."
And an exquisite mistress, if that is Lavilia's status. But the military man is not here to gossip.
"My name is Blackburn," he says.
"I'm Jara. But Pablo surely told you."
Nothing much escapes him, apparently. Blackburn will have to play his cards close to the vest.
"I heard reports, yesterday. Was the Miami connection the only source of chronoreg?"
"No, there is also the Rio connection, but its territory stops at Acapulco."
"Do you have any contacts?"
Jara does not answer. He walks to the far end of the room and sits down comfortably before speaking again
"The Rio is better than the Miami. Synthesized by more competent chemists, two guys from South Africa, I think. More effective, not so hard on the system: three caps have as much effect as five Miami caps, and you need double that to get side-effects that are as serious."
"How many can you take without risking brain damage?"
Jara frowns, intrigued. He's wearing glasses that give him the sober look of a fiftyish man, what with his early baldness.
"It's a question users never ask. They take chronoreg with hash and one cap at a time is enough. You want the cold effect?"
"The 'cold' effect, as you say. Chronoregression. Is the jump to the past always arithmetically proportional to the dosage?"
"I'm not a biochemist, you know, but yes, probably. However, I don't know anyone who's tried to record it."
"Well, you can tell your next clients about me if we reach an agreement."
"I will have to find some, my friend. You seem to want a lot of it."
"If it's the Rio stuff, I want twenty-five caps. That is, if I can have them tomorrow. The day after tomorrow, I'll need more."
"Payment in advance, kamikaze. Your skull will explode like a ripe pomegranate."
"That's my problem.
The man looks like he's thinking for a moment.
"We're probably talking twelve hundred, thirteen hundred dollars a cap, you realize that?"
Blackburn's only answer is a nod. His estimate was lower, but he was expecting Miami, less effective.
"How much do you have?"
Blackburn shows his cards - almost all of them:
"Thirty thousand. I leaned on all my friends, here and in Canada. I don't know yet how I'll reimburse them. I borrowed money on my Amex card. I took out another loan, not very legit, and I was lucky I scraped by as I did. I won't have time to imagine other set-ups like that. Thirty thousand. If I don't get the quantity I need for that price, I may as well pay back everybody and give up..."
He stops. He didn't know he was so close to cracking up. He didn't even realize how tense the conversation was. A few steps bring him to an aquarium built into a bookshelf. Behind him, at the other end of the room, he can hear Jara's voice, not talking to him. The man is speaking to his cell in a low voice: Blackburn understands it, seeing him in the chrome steel surface, which acts as a mirror. Some Latino-American slang he surely won't understand a word of.
He forces himself to take deep breaths in order to get a grip on himself. He focuses on the aquarium, on the discreetly illuminated bottom where moving shadows evoke algae and coral, with the hint of a current. It takes him a while to realize that the overly exotic fishes are fake, brought to life by some network of invisible threads. And they are shining, the eyes for some, for others a luminescent dotted line on the sides; some bodies are entirely phosphorescent, or crisscrossed with a crystalline net.
"Blackburn."
He turns around.
"It will take time, you're aware of that?"
"Time is what I lack the most."
"I've just checked: we'll find nothing here in Vera Cruz or in Merida."
"Three thousand for you if you find some in twelve hours."
"In addition to the thirty thousand?"
"I can still steal. I might as well, I've come this far."
"It's your neck. I'm asking six thousand, and twenty-four hours."
Jara stands up.
"And it still hasn't been found, I warn you."
What else could he do? Blackburn will not find anyone as well disposed towards him. He doesn't know this city, he doesn't know its underworld. It would take him hours, perhaps, to find a pusher with some importance, and moreover he would certainly risk falling into a trap.
"You'll come for me? Tomorrow morning. This morning."
"I won't be done with my search."
"We'll do it together. I'll wait for you, ten o'clock, at the Hyatt."
Jara looks intently at him again, intrigued.
"You're a weird one, señor."
"Are you going to ask for advance payment?" Blackburn interrupts.
"It's a firm offer, I know that: you're serious. I'll go with fifteen hundred now, fifteen hundred if I set up a buy, and three thousand afterwards."
Blackburn pulls out his wallet, counts three bills, which the pusher pockets elegantly. Jara goes to the door of the library, opens it a little then turns halfway around:
"No one has ever managed to change the past, you know."
"Perhaps because no one has tried yet..."
© 1999 Éditions Alire & Daniel Sernine
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