I shouldn’t be here.
Saskia released the push-to-talk button on the yoke.
If what happened in the car was true, then I never reached David Proctor. I never travelled in time to 2003. I never boarded this aircraft.
The daylight through the misted cockpit window was dazzling. Dazzling? Then her eyes were not light-adapted. They were same eyes that had, the instant before, been staring at a gloomy dashboard.
She looked at the young woman in the co-pilot seat and
(Vicki. Her name was Vicki. The last surviving flight steward. It’s the year 2003. This aircraft is going to crash and only I will survive.)
was struck by her resemblance to the co-driver in the police car. Like Saskia, Vicki wore a headset and oxygen mask.
Before she could voice an urge that was building inside her—an urge to tell Vicki that this moment was gone, in the past, only a memory, and nothing could change the outcome—the yoke began to move. It drifted towards her and rotated anticlockwise as the 737 reached the crest of its sickening, shallow corkscrew, then pitched forward, rolling right. She looked at the instrumentation panel and noted the warnings: the cabin altitude was too high, hydraulic pressures read zero, and the aircraft was losing height.
Suddenly, a siren bleated. The sound matched a blinking button on the panel that read ALT HORN CUTOUT. Saskia almost touched it, hesitated, then pressed. The siren stopped.
Hadn’t I already silenced that alarm when I entered the cabin?
‘The flight management computer cannot begin a controlled descent,’ Saskia said. She spoke for the flight recorder, for the benefit of air crash investigators. ‘I will do so now.’
I’ve said that before. The aircraft will crash regardless. What if I remember the experience of the crash this time? What will it feel like?
Saskia disengaged the automatic pilot and counted ten seconds. The behaviour of the aircraft did not change. Its slow corkscrew continued. Weeks after this event, Saskia would research the phenomenon and come to understand it as a Dutch roll. It was a natural aerodynamic behaviour that should have been dampened by the autopilot.
She tried to push the yoke forward, but it was immovable. She exchanged a look with the stewardess.
‘Help me, Vicki. Push.’
It’s pointless. There is no hydraulic fluid left. The aircraft cannot be—
‘It’s moving,’ said the stewardess. Her eyes crinkled. ‘Are we flying it?’
Saskia pressed the push-to-talk. ‘DFU323 has limited response to manual control. I am descending to 10,000 feet. Anyone please respond. Anyone respond.’
‘They still can’t hear us.’
And they never will, thought Saskia. The force that took the hydraulic fluid took the radio, too. Only the trace of Vicki’s voice would remain, etched on the solid state memory of the flight recorder.
Saskia re-engaged the autopilot.
‘I will now instruct the autopilot to descend to 10,000 feet.’
‘No need to tell me. Just do it.’
‘I am speaking for the benefit of the flight recorder, not yours.’
The stewardess sank into her chair and tightened its harness. Saskia held her left thumb for luck and, with a hand numbed by cold, punched a new altitude into the flight management computer. There was no auditory feedback. Saskia cupped against the display against the sunlight. The numbers were there.
That didn’t happen last time. It stayed blank all the way to the ground.
The nose of the aircraft began to drop.
That shouldn’t happen. Why is this happening?
A horn whooped.
‘Overspeed warning!’ said an American voice. An actor speaking from the past. ‘Overspeed warning!’
The aircraft began to rise. Its angle of bank flattened. She reduced thrust and deployed the wing spoilers to increase drag. The horn stopped.
‘Vicki,’ Saskia said. She removed her own mask. ‘I need you to speak to the passengers. Get them ready for a crash landing. I can’t risk turning the aircraft. The best I can do is dump the fuel and land along the Danube.’
‘Fuck it all, the Danube? Are you crazy?’
‘No.’
To herself, Vicki said, ‘Perhaps we can radio for help.’
Saskia turned to the uneven horizon. It was a clear, cold day and a silver thread—the Danube—was visible on the plain.
‘Vicki, help is here, and it’s me. Tell the passengers to adopt crash positions and listen for my signal, which will be “Brace, brace, brace”. We’ll be down in three or four minutes.’
It took long moment for Vicki to decide that Saskia was her best hope. She pulled off her headphones and removed the oxygen mask. Its grey buckles swung. Then, squeezing Saskia’s shoulder, she was gone.
Saskia held the yoke. The pilot had been exsanguinated in his seat, and the blood, no longer warm, soaked through her trousers. There was more blood on the flight plan pinned to the centre of the yoke. She could hear the air blasting across the hole in the fuselage where the forward passenger door had once been. The rushing sound was louder at low altitude. Her gaze made a slow inventory of the controls. How extraordinary that she should know every switch, setting and dial from a desperate search of the Internet only minutes before: piggy-backing the mobile phones of the passengers, collecting electronic manuals of maintenance, pilot checklists and avionics, as well as air safety reports. She knew everything about this aircraft and what it could do with only partial hydraulics and full control over its thrust. The knowledge was not unlike her command of chess. She understood its state: it was a system that, knowable at time one, should be knowable at time two.
She did not have the strength to put the aircraft through S-turns, so the approach would be fast. She took a flight manual from the stowage bin on her left. Because the electronic fuel displays were dead, she had to guess the weight of the aircraft, and from that guess make another about the angle to set flaps.
The Danube loomed.
She set the flaps and held on until her last minutes were gone. The grey water expanded, but the river was much smaller than she remembered. The nose of the aircraft rose as she reduced the thrust.
There were two whoops from the cabin speakers. The same American voice: ‘Pull up! Too low—terrain! Pull up!’
Saskia felt the thickening air through her hands, which shook on the juddering yoke. She swallowed and pulled back as hard as she could. She pushed the intercom.
‘Brace, brace, brace!’
She watched sunlight move across the ceiling switches. Behind her, screams overcame the volume of the alarms and the rushing air.
This won’t hurt. I’m not really here.
She looked at her hands.
At her left hand.
Maybe this time I’ll save them.
She was wearing Jem’s ring.
Maybe this time—
Chapter Twenty-Four
The alarm had stopped. So too had the American voice. The sun no longer swung across the ceiling. There was no vibration through the yoke or the seat and the jet engines were silent. Everything had stopped.
Saskia took her hands from the yoke. She unbuckled her harness and leaned forward until the ground was visible through the window. The Danube was fifty metres below, and real enough, but unmoving. The wavelets were still.
Her mouth hung open.
She rose from her seat and moved to the rear of the cockpit, where she could stand. Between her feet was the body of the pilot. His dry eyes stared into the shadows beneath the seat. Saskia stepped over him, up the slope to the flight deck door. Her trainers squelched.