PUFFIN BOOKS
Praise for TimeRiders:
‘A thril er ful of spectacular e ects’ – Guardian
‘Insanely exciting, nail-biting stu ’ – Independent on Sunday
‘This is a novel that is as addictive as any computer game’
– Waterstone’s Books Quarterly
‘Promises to be a big hit’ – Irish News
‘A thril ing adventure that hurtles across time and place at breakneck speed’ – Lovereading4kids.co.uk
‘Plenty of fast-paced action … this is a real page-turner’ –
‘Plenty of fast-paced action … this is a real page-turner’ –
WriteAway.org.uk
‘A great read that wil appeal to both boys and girls …
you’l nd this book addictive!’ – redhouse.co.uk
‘Contender for best science ction book of the year … an absolute winner’ – Flipside
ALEX SCARROW used to be a graphic artist, then he decided to be a computer games designer. Final y, he grew up and became an author. He has writ en a number of successful thril ers and several screenplays, but it’s YA ction that has al owed him to real y have fun with the ideas and concepts he was playing around with when designing games.
He lives in Norwich with his son, Jacob, his wife, Frances, and two very fat rats.
Books by Alex Scarrow
TimeRiders
TimeRiders: Day of the Predator
www.time-riders.co.uk
ALEX SCARROW
PUFFIN
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered O ces: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
pu nbooks.com
First published 2010
Copyright © Alex Scarrow, 2010
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-141-95106-5
To Frances, Jacob, Max and Frodo – Field O ce, Norwich And as for you, dear reader, the fol owing message is encrypted for your eyes only:
ER YKU CPVO IPJPBOD TK DONKDO TCES TCOJ YKU
UJDOQSTPJD TCO EILKQTPJNO KR KJO WKQD –
LPJDKQP
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1: 2026, Mumbai, India
CHAPTER 2: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 3: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 4: 2015, Texas
CHAPTER 5: 1906, San Francisco
CHAPTER 6: 1906, San Francisco
CHAPTER 7: 2015, Texas
CHAPTER 8: 1906, San Francisco
CHAPTER 9: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 10: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 11: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 12: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 13: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 14: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 15: 2015, Texas
CHAPTER 16: 2015, Texas
CHAPTER 17: 2015, Texas
CHAPTER 18: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 19: 2015, Texas
CHAPTER 20: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 23: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 24: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 25: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 26: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 27: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 28: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 29: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 30: Wednesday, 2001, New York
CHAPTER 31: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 32: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 33: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 34: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 35: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 36: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 37: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 38: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 39: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 40: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 41: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 42: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 43: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 44: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 45: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 46: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 47: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 48: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 49: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 50: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 51: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53: 2 May 1941, Somervel County, Texas CHAPTER 54: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 55: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 56: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 57: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 58: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 59: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 60: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 61: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 62: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 63: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 64: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 65: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 66: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 67: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 68: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 69: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 70: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 71: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 72: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 73: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 74: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 75: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 76: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 77: 1941, Somervel County, Texas
CHAPTER 78: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 79: 65 mil ion years BC, jungle
CHAPTER 80: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 81: 2001, New York
CHAPTER 1
2026, Mumbai, India
They’d heard the rumbling coming towards them down the echoing stairwel like a locomotive train. Then al of a sudden it was pitch black, the air thick with dust and smoke. Sal Vikram thought she was going to choke on the grit and particles of brick plaster she was sucking in through her nose, clogging her throat and the back of her mouth with a thick chalky paste.
It felt like an eternity before it was clear enough to see the emergency wal light in the stairwel once more. By its dim amber light she could see the lower ight of stairs was completely blocked by rubble and twisted metal spars. Above them, the stairwel they’d been clambering down only moments earlier was crushed by the col apsed oors above. She saw an extended arm emerging from the tangle of beams and crumbling breeze-blocks, an arm chalkwhite, perfectly stil , reaching down to her as if pleading to be held or shaken.
‘We’re trapped,’ whispered her mother.
Sal looked to her, then to her father. He shook his head vigorously, dust cascading o his thin hair.
‘No! We are not! We dig!’ He looked at Sal. ‘That’s what we do, we dig. Right, Saleena?’
we do, we dig. Right, Saleena?’
She nodded mutely.
He turned to the others trapped on the emergency stairwel along with them. ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘We must dig. We can’t wait for rescue …’ Her father could have said more, could have completed that sentence, could have said what they were al thinking – that if the skyscraper had col apsed down to this oor there was no reason why it wasn’t soon to fold in on itself al the way down. Sal looked around. She recognized faces despite them al being painted ghost-white with dust: Mr and Mrs Kumar from two apartments along; the Chaudhrys with their three young sons; Mr Joshipura, a business man like her father, but single … enjoyed a string of girlfriends. Tonight, presumably, he’d been on his own.
And … another man, standing at the back of the stairwel , beneath the wal light. She didn’t recognize him.
‘If we move things, we may cause more of it to col apse!’ said Mrs Kumar.
Sal’s mother placed a hand on her husband. ‘She is right, Hari.’
Hari Vikram turned to look at them al . ‘Some of you are old enough to remember, yes? Remember what happened to the Americans in New York? Their twin towers?’
Sal remembered the footage, something they’d been shown in history class. Both of those tal , magni cent buildings sliding down into the earth and disappearing among bil owing dark grey clouds.
among bil owing dark grey clouds.
Heads nodded. Everyone old enough remembered, but none of them stepped forward. As if to press the issue, a metal spar above creaked and slid, releasing a smal avalanche of dust and debris down on to them.
‘If we just wait here … we die!’ shouted her father.
‘They wil come!’ replied Mr Joshipura. ‘The remen wil soon –’
‘No. I’m afraid they won’t.’ She turned towards the voice. The old man she hadn’t recognized had nal y said something. ‘I’m afraid they won’t come for you,’ he repeated, his voice softer this time. He sounded like a westerner, English or American. And, unlike everyone else, he wasn’t coated in dust. ‘They won’t have time. This building has less than three minutes before the support struts on the oor beneath us give way. Combined with the weight of the col apsed oors above, it’l be enough for Palace Tower to go al the way down.’
He looked around at them, the wide eyes of the adults, the wider eyes of the children. ‘I’m truly sorry, but none of you are going to survive.’
The heat in the stairwel was increasing. A oor below, the ames had taken a rm hold, their heat softening the steel girders of the skyscraper. Deep groans rippled and echoed around them.
Hari Vikram studied the stranger for a moment; the fact that he was the only one not coated in a thick layer of chalky dust wasn’t wasted on him. ‘Wait! You are clean. How did you get in here? Is there another way through?’
How did you get in here? Is there another way through?’
The man shook his head. ‘No.’
‘But … you were not with us before the oor col apsed!
There must be some way –’
‘I have only just arrived,’ replied the man, ‘and I must leave soon. We real y don’t have much time.’
Sal’s mother stepped towards him. ‘Leave? How? Can you … can you help us?’
‘I can help only one of you.’ His eyes rested on Sal. ‘You
… Saleena Vikram.’
Sal felt every pair of eyes in the stairwel set le on her.
‘Take my hand,’ said the man.
‘Who are you?’ asked her father.
‘I’m your daughter’s only way out. If she takes my hand
… she lives. If she doesn’t, she wil die along with the rest of you.’
One of the young boys began to cry. Sal knew him; she’d babysat the Chaudhry boys. He was nine and terri ed, clutching his favourite soft toy – a one-eyed bear
– tightly in both hands as if the bear was his ticket out. Another deep moan from one of the skyscraper’s structural support bars echoed through the smal space on the stairwel , like the mournful cal of a dying whale, or the stress vibration of a sinking ship. The stale air around them, already hot, was becoming almost too painful to inhale.
‘We have just over two minutes,’ said the man. ‘The heat of the re is causing the building’s framework to deform. Palace Tower wil col apse, directly in on itself at deform. Palace Tower wil col apse, directly in on itself at rst, then sideways into the mal below. Five thousand people wil be dead a hundred and twenty seconds from now. And tomorrow the news wil be al about the terrorists who caused this.’
‘Who … who are you?’ asked her father again. The man – he looked old, perhaps in his fties or sixties
– stepped forward through the crowd, his hand extended towards Saleena. ‘We don’t have time. You have to take my hand,’ he said.
Her father blocked his path. ‘Who are you? H-how did you get through to us?’
The old man turned to him. ‘I’m sorry. There is no time. Just know that I arrived here … and I can leave just as easily.’
‘How?!’
‘How is unimportant … I simply can. And I can take just your daughter … only your daughter with me.’ The old man looked down at a watch on his wrist. ‘Now there real y is lit le time left – a minute and a half.’
Sal watched her father’s taut face, his mind working with businesslike e ciency. No time for hows and whys. The icker of re was coming up from the blocked stairwel below them, sending dancing shadows through the dust-l ed air.
Hari Vikram stepped aside. ‘Take her, then! You must take her!’
Sal looked up at the old man, frightened at his strangeness, reluctant to o er her hand to him. Not that she strangeness, reluctant to o er her hand to him. Not that she believed in anything beyond this world, not Hindu gods, not angels or demons … but he seemed not of this world somehow. An apparition. A ghost.
Her father angrily snatched at her hand. ‘Saleena! You must go with him!’
She looked at her father, her mother. ‘Why c-can’t we al go?’
The old man shook his head. ‘Only you, Saleena. I’m sorry.’
‘Why?’ She realized tears were streaming down her cheeks, tracing dark tracks on her chalky face.
‘You’re special,’ said the old man, ‘that is why.’
‘Please, you must take my boys too!’ cal ed out Mrs Chaudhry.
The old man turned to her. ‘I can’t. I wish I could … but I can’t.’
‘Pleeease! They’re so young. Younger than this girl!
They have their whole lives –’
‘I’m sorry, it’s not my choice. I can only take Saleena.’
Sal felt her father’s hands on her shoulders. He pushed her roughly forward towards the stranger. ‘You take her!
You take her now!’
‘Dadda! No!’
‘You take her now!’
‘No! Not –’
They heard a deep rumble and felt the oor trembling beneath their feet.
‘We have only seconds,’ said the old man. ‘Hurry!’
‘We have only seconds,’ said the old man. ‘Hurry!’
‘SALEENA!’ her father screamed. ‘YOU GO!’
‘Dadda!’ she cried. She turned to her mum. ‘Please! I can’t!’
The old man stretched forward and grasped hold of her hand. He pul ed her towards him, but she found herself instinctively squirming and twisting her hand to escape his tight grip. ‘No!’ she screamed.
The deep rumbling increased in volume, the oor shuddering, and cascades of dust and grit l ed the air around them, tumbling down from above.
‘This is it!’ the old man said. ‘Time has come! Saleena
… I can save your life if you come with me!’
She looked at him. It seemed madness that he could, but, somehow, she believed him. ‘Your parents want this too.’ His eyes, so intense, so old.
‘Yes!’ yel ed her father above the growing roar. ‘Please!
Take her NOW!’
Beside his smal frame, her mother was screaming, stretching out her hands to hold her one last time. Her father grabbed her, held her back. ‘No, my love! She must go!’Mrs Chaudhry pushed her boys at the old man. ‘Please!
Take their hands too! Take their hands –’
The oor shook beneath their feet, lurching to one side. Sal suddenly felt light-headed, as if she was free fal ing. This is it, it’s fal ing!
Then the oor suddenly fractured beneath their feet, revealing an ocean of churning, roiling ames, like gazing revealing an ocean of churning, roiling ames, like gazing down into Hel itself. And the last thing she recal ed was seeing that one-eyed bear tumbling down through a large split in the stairwel ’s oor into the re below.
CHAPTER 2
2001, New York
Sal sat upright in her bunk – gasping for breath, feeling her cheeks wet with tears.
The nightmare again.
It was quiet and stil in the archway. She could hear Maddy snoring on the bunk below, and Liam whimpering nonsensical words in his soft Irish accent as he stirred restlessly on the bunk opposite.
A muted lamp glowed softly from across the archway, lighting their wooden dinner table and the odd assortment of old armchairs around it. LEDs blinked among the bank of computer equipment across the way, hard drives whirring. One of the monitors remained on; she could see the computer system was doing a routine defrag and datale tidying. It never slept. Not it … not any more – the computer wasn’t IT any more. It was Bob.
Unable to go back to sleep, she clambered o the top bunk. Maddy twitched in her sleep, and Liam also seemed to be unset led. Maybe they too were reliving their last moments: Liam’s sinking Titanic, Maddy’s doomed airliner. The nightmares came al too often.
She tiptoed across the archway, barefoot on the cold She tiptoed across the archway, barefoot on the cold concrete oor, and sat down in one of the swivel chairs, tucking her feet under her and sit ing on them for warmth. She grabbed the mouse and opened a dialogue box. Her ngernails clacked softly on the keyboard.
> hey, bob.
> Is this Maddy?
> no, it’s sal.
> It is 2.37 a.m. You cannot sleep, Sal?
>nightmares.
> Are you recal ing your recruitment?
Recruitment, that’s what the old man, Foster, had cal ed it. Like she’d had any real choice in the mat er. Life or death. Take my hand or be mashed to pulp amid a crumbling skyscraper. She shuddered. Great fragging choice.
>yeah, my recruitment.
> You have my sympathy, Sal.
‘Thanks.’ She spoke softly into the desk mic – too lazy to tap out any more. Anyway, the clickety-click of the keyboard echoing through the archway was far more likely to disturb the others than her speaking quietly.
‘I miss them so much, Bob.’
> You miss your family?
‘Mum and Dad.’ She sighed. ‘It seems like years ago.’
> You have been in the team 44 time cycles. 88 days precisely, Sal.
Time cycles – the two-day time bubble that played out and reset for them, constantly keeping them and their eld and reset for them, constantly keeping them and their eld o ce in 10 and 11 September 2001, while the world outside moved on as normal.
Outside … outside was New York – Brooklyn, to be more precise. Streets she was now get ing to know so wel . Even the people she had conversations with, people who were never going to remember her: the Chinese laundromat lady, the Iranian man running the grocery store on the corner. Every time they spoke, it was, for them, the rst time – a new face, a new customer to greet cheerily. But she already knew them, knew what they were about to say, how proud the Chinese lady was of her son, how angry the Iranian man was with the terrorists for bombing his city.
This morning was the Tuesday, 11 September, the second day of the ever-reset ing time cycle. In just under six hours the rst airliner was going to crash into the Twin Towers, and New York and al her inhabitants were going to change forever.
‘So what’re you doing, Bob?’
> Data col ation. Hard-drive maintenance. And reading a book.
‘Oh? Cool. What’re you reading?’
A page of text appeared on the screen. She could see individual words momentarily highlight one after the other in rapid blinking succession as Bob ‘read’ while they talked.
> Harry Pot er.
Sal remembered seeing the old lms from the rst Sal remembered seeing the old lms from the rst decade of the century. They didn’t do much for her, but her parents had liked them as children.
‘Are you enjoying it?’
Bob didn’t answer immediately. She noticed the ickering of highlighted words on the open page of text on the screen grind to a sudden halt, and the soft whirring sound of hard drives being spun momentarily ceased. Forming an opinion … that was something Bob struggled with. It required the computer system’s entire capacity for him to actual y formulate, or rather simulate, something as simple as a human emotion … a preference. A like or dislike.
Final y, after a few seconds, she heard the hard drives whirring gently once again.
> I like the magic very much.
Sal smiled as she acknowledged how many terabytes of computing power had gone into that simple statement. If she had a mean streak in her, she could have asked him what colour he thought went best with violet, or what was tastier – chocolate or vanil a? It would probably lock the system for hours as Bob laboured through in nite decision loops to nal y come up with the answer that he was unable to compute a valid response.
Bless him. Great at data retrieval, cross-referencing and processing. But don’t ask him to pick dessert o a menu.
CHAPTER 3
2001, New York
Monday (time cycle 45)
Most of the damage that happened here in the archway with the last time contamination has been xed up now –
the holes in the wal s l ed again, the door to the back room replaced with a new sturdy one. And we got a brand-new emergency generator instal ed. Some workmen came in to set it up. We had to hide the time-portal equipment from them, and when they asked about al the computer screens at the desk Maddy told them we were a computer-game developer. I think they believed her. It’s a much more powerful generator, and more reliable than the last shadd-yah old one. I hope we don’t have to use it, though.
We’ve also got an old TV set, a DVD player and one of those Nintendo machines. Liam loves the games. He’s mad about one stupid game with sil y characters driving around on go-karts throwing bananas at each other.
Boys, eh?
Maddy says we need to grow a new support unit. A new Bob. Just in case another time shift comes along that we need to deal with. Only, the new Bob won’t be entirely new. The body wil , yes, but she says we can upload Bob’s new. The body wil , yes, but she says we can upload Bob’s AI back into it and he’l be exactly like he was … and not the retarded idiot that plopped out of the growth tube last time. Which is a relief. Bob was so-o-o-o stupid when he was rst born.
We xed the growth tubes. Some got damaged by those creature things that broke in, but they’re al functioning now, and we’ve got them l ed up with that stinking protein solution the foetuses oat in. We had to steal a load of that gloop from a hospital blood bank. It’s the fake blood they use, the plasma stu , but with a witches’ brew of added vitamins and proteins.
Honestly, it’s like runny snot. But worse than that, because it smel s like vomit.
What we don’t have yet, though, are the foetuses. Apparently we can’t go and grab any old one – they’re special y genetical y engineered sometime in the future …
Maddy looked at Liam. ‘You ready?’
‘Aye,’ he replied, shivering as he stood behind her in nothing more than a pair of striped boxer shorts, and holding a watertight bag ful of clothes.
She looked down at her own shivering body, trembling beneath her T-shirt. ‘Maybe one day we could get around to rigging up something to heat the water before we jump in.’‘That’s for sure.’
She climbed the steps beside the perspex cylinder, looking down into the cold water, freshly run from the looking down into the cold water, freshly run from the water mains. She set led down on the top step beside the lip of the cylinder and dipped her toes in.
A wet departure – that was the protocol. To ensure that nothing but them and the water they were oating in was sent back in time … and not any chunks of oor, or carpet or concrete or cabling that had no possible reason to exist in the past.
‘Oh Jeeeez! It’s freezing!’
Liam squat ed down beside her. ‘Great.’
Maddy shuddered then looked up at Sal, seated at the computer station. ‘What’s the departure count?’
‘Just over a minute.’
‘So,’ said Liam, slowly easing himself into the water, gasping as he did so. ‘You’re sure about this?’
‘Uh-huh.’ No, she wasn’t. Not sure about anything. The old man, Foster, had left her in charge. Left her running this team and this eld o ce even though they’d barely survived their rst brush with time contamination. Al she had for help now was computer-Bob and a data folder on his hard drive entitled ‘Things You’l Probably Want to Ask’.
‘How do we grow new support units?’ was the name of one of the rst les she’d found in the folder when she’d delved into it a few weeks ago. First order of business had been get ing the grow-tubes up and running and get ing one of those clones on the go. When she’d double-clicked on it, what she’d got was an image of Foster’s face looking out of the monitor as he’d addressed the web cam. He out of the monitor as he’d addressed the web cam. He looked ten, perhaps twenty years younger than he had the morning he’d told her she was ready, wished her luck and walked out of Starbucks leaving her to run things. The Foster onscreen looked no more than fty. ‘So,’ he began, adjusting the ex so that the mic was in front of his mouth. ‘You’ve opened this le. Which means you’ve been careless and your support unit has been destroyed and now you need to grow a new one.’ Foster had proceeded with detailed instructions on maintenance and feeding, and how the growth tubes work. But nal y, towards the end of the log entry, was the bit they’d been after.
‘Right … so the clones are grown from a store of engineered human foetuses. I’l presume you’ve used up the last of the refrigerated ones kept in your eld o ce and now you need more.’
Not exactly used up; those of them mid-growth had al died in the tubes, poisoned by their own waste uids because the electric-powered pumps hadn’t been functioning. The bodies – pale, lifeless, hairless, jel y-like forms that ranged from something that could’ve sat in the palm of her hand to the body of a boy of eight or nine –
had been taken care of. Taken out, weighted down and dumped in the river. Not an experience she ever wanted to repeat.
‘The good news is there are more of them. There’s a supply of viable candidate foetuses, al engineered with the silicon processor chip already housed in the cranial cavity. They’re ready to grow to ful term and, of course, cavity. They’re ready to grow to ful term and, of course, come with basic learning AI code pre-instal ed.’ The Foster on the monitor smiled coyly. ‘If you’ve been smart, you managed to retrieve your last support unit’s chip and preserved its AI …’
She nodded. Yup. Wel , Liam had done that messy business.
‘… so any new support unit doesn’t need to start out from scratch as a complete imbecile, and you can upload the AI from the computer system. So, like I say, the good news is there’s more of them. But the bad news is they’re not going to be delivered to your front door like … like …
some sort of a pizza delivery; I’m afraid you’ve got to go and get them yourselves.’
Sal cal ed out a thirty-second warning and Maddy’s mind returned to the icy water in the displacement cylinder. She eased herself in beside Liam, her breath chu ng out at the cold. ‘Uhhh! This is f-f-f-freezing! How d-do you c-cope with it?’ she asked Liam, her teeth chat ering.
He o ered her a lopsided grin. ‘It’s not like I get a choice, is it?’
‘Twenty seconds!’ cal ed out Sal.
‘When did you say we’re going, again?’ asked Liam.
‘I t-t-told you: 1906. San Francisco.’
Liam’s eyebrows locked in concentration for a moment.
‘Hold on now … is that not the same year that … that –?’
‘Yes?’
‘I remember my dad reading it in the Irish Times. It’s
‘I remember my dad reading it in the Irish Times. It’s the year that –’
‘Fifteen seconds!’
Maddy let go of the side of the perspex cylinder and began treading water. ‘Liam, you’ve g-got to go under now.
’ ‘I know … I know! Bleedin’ hate this bit.’
‘Maybe Sal and I should t-teach you how to swim some time?’
‘Ten seconds!’
‘Oh Jay-zus-’n’-Mary, why does time travel have to be done this way? Why did that Waldstein fel a have to be so stupid as to invent bleedin’ time travel in the rst place!’
‘You wanna blame someone … b-blame the Chinese what’s-his-name guy who worked it out in the rst place.’
Liam nodded. ‘Aghh, wel , him too!’
‘Five seconds!’ cal ed Sal. ‘You real y need to duck under now!’
Maddy held her hand above his head. ‘Need me to push you under?’
‘No! I’l just … I’l , ah … Al right!’
Liam sucked in a lungful of air and clasped his nose with his free hand.
‘S-see you on the other side,’ she ut ered as she pushed him under the water. Then sucked in air and submerged as wel .
Oh Jeez … here goes.
Her rst time. Her rst time into the past, not counting her recruitment from 2010. She’d been too busy checking her recruitment from 2010. She’d been too busy checking the coordinates were set right, arranging the return window time-stamp, checking Sal had pul ed out the right clothes for them to wear from the old closet in the back room, making sure she remembered the details of their mission … too busy with al those things to realize how ut erly terri ed she was at the prospect of being pushed out of space-time, through chaos space – and God knows what that was – to emerge back into the space-time of nearly a hundred years ago.
She opened her eyes under the water and saw the foggy form of Liam’s scrawny body thrashing around in blind panic. She saw bubbles zig-zagging up around him. She could see the dim lamp on the computer desk through the tube’s scu ed plastic, the faint outline of Sal … then …
… Then they were fal ing, tumbling through darkness.
CHAPTER 4
2015, Texas
‘OK, students, we’l be arriving at the institute very shortly, so I want you al to be on your very best behaviour,’ said Mr Whitmore, absentmindedly scratching at the scru y saltand-pepper stubble around his mouth. He considered it a ful beard even if no one else did. ‘As I’m sure you wil be,’ he added.
Edward Chan sighed and looked out of the coach’s broad window at the scrub beside the highway. Outside the air-conditioned comfort of the coach it was another blistering Texas day. Hot and bright. Two things he hated. He much preferred his dark bedroom back in Houston, drapes drawn, an ultraviolet lamp making the manga posters on his black bedroom wal s glow like the halogen signs outside some cool nightclub.
Dark and cool and peaceful. A place far away from the incessant noise of other kids, the shril laughter of clusters of girls. High-school girls always seemed to come in clusters – mean, spiteful clusters that sniggered and whispered and pointed. And the boys … If it was possible, they were even worse. The jocks – the alpha-male types –
loud, brash, great at sports, oozing easy con dence, gangsta rap hissing out of their iPod earbuds, high-ving each rap hissing out of their iPod earbuds, high-ving each other for any reason. Golden-tanned, sandy-haired, blueeyed boys who, you could tel , would ease through school, ease through col ege, ease through life … and never once wonder if someone was whispering behind their back, laughing at them, pointing at them.
That was the tribal system at school: the girls – giggly gaggles of Hannah Montana clones, the jocks in their swaggering gangsta gangs … and nal y the third category, the ones like Edward Chan – the freaks. Loners, emos, geeks, nerds: the cookies that didn’t quite t the cookiecut er machine that was high school. His dad was always tel ing him it was the freaks that ended up doing the great things. It was the freaks who became dotcom bil ionaires, famous inventors, movie directors, rock stars … even presidents. The jocks, on the other hand, ended up sel ing real estate or managing WalMart stores. And the Hannah Montanas ended up becoming stay-at-home moms, get ing fat, bored and lonely. Ahead of the coach he could see a cluster of pale buildings emerging from the ochre drabness, and presently they slowed down and stopped at a security checkpoint. The other kids on the coach, about thirty of them, al a couple of years older than Edward, began to bob in their seats, craning their necks to look at the armed security guards and the lab buildings up ahead.
‘Please stay seated for the moment, guys,’ said Mr Whitmore over the coach’s PA system.
Edward stretched to look over the headrest of the seat Edward stretched to look over the headrest of the seat in front of him. He saw a man climb up the steps on to the coach. A smart man in a pale linen suit. He shook hands with Mr Whitmore, the school principal who was chaperoning the students.
‘Right, guys, I’m going to hand you over to Mr Kel y, who is from the institute. He’s going to be showing us around the facilities today.’
Mr Kel y took the microphone from him. ‘Good morning, boys and girls. Let me rst say welcome to the institute. It’s an honour to have you kids come and visit. As I understand it, you guys have al been nominated by your various schools to come along today because you’re al straight-A students?’
Whitmore shook his head. ‘Not quite, Mr Kel y. “Mostimproved performers”. Students who’ve most clearly demonstrated a wil ingness to learn. We have al levels and abilities here on this coach, from schools right across the state, but what they al have in common is the spectacular improvement in their year-end SATs scores. These students are the ones who’ve worked the hardest to bet er themselves.’
Mr Kel y’s tanned face was split with a broad smile.
‘Fantastic! We like improvers here. Go-get ers. I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two of you on this coach ended up working for us here one day, huh?’
There was a token of polite laughter up and down the rows of seats.
The coach lurched slowly forward, down a long straight The coach lurched slowly forward, down a long straight driveway anked by freshly cut lawns, wet with the moisture from water sprinklers.
‘OK, guys, we’l shortly be arriving at the visitors’
reception area, where you can get o . We have some refreshments ready for you before we start the tour of this facility. I wil be your guide for today, and, as I’m talking, if you have any questions at al , please don’t be afraid to raise your hands and ask. We want you to get the most out of today … to understand what our work is here and how very important it is to the environment.’
Edward looked out of the window as the coach approached a decorative owerbed and swung slowly around it. In the middle, framed by an arrangement of vivid yel ow chrysanthemums, was a sign: WELCOME TO TERI: TEXAS ADVANCED ENERGY RESEARCH INSTITUTE.
CHAPTER 5
1906, San Francisco
‘Hey! Don’t turn around yet – I’m not ready,’ snapped Maddy irritably.
Liam stayed where he was, facing the grubby redbrick wal in front of him. The back al ey reeked of rot ing sh, and he wondered if he lingered too much longer here whether the smel was going to be stuck on him for the rest of the day.
‘Are you not done yet?’ he asked.
Maddy mut ered under her breath. ‘It’s al these damned laces and hooks and but ons and things. How the heck did women manage to dress themselves back then?’
He turned his head a lit le to look up the al ey. It seemed to open on to a busy thoroughfare. He saw several horse-drawn carts clat er by, and men dressed like him: formal grey morning coats, but oned waistcoats, highcol ared shirts, with top hats, at caps and bowler hats. Very much like the bet er-dressed men in Cork might have worn on a Sunday morning. The clothes they’d found in the back room appeared to be perfectly authentic. There’d been another couple of dusty costumes in there. Sal had said something about them being for the other back-up drop-point – another time, another place.
drop-point – another time, another place.
‘Oh, dammit … this’l have to do,’ tut ed Maddy irritably.
‘Can I turn round now?’
‘Yes … but I look a total doof.’
He turned round. His eyes widened.
‘What?’ she gasped suspiciously. ‘What is it? What’ve I got wrong?’
‘Nothing! It’s nothing … it’s just …’
Maddy scowled at him beneath the wide-brimmed sun hat, topped with a plume of white ostrich feathers. Her slim neck was framed by decorative lace that descended down the front of a tightly drawn and intricately embroidered bodice. Her waist seemed impossibly thin, as the gown ared out beneath and tumbled down to the ground, modestly covering any sign of her legs. She put her hands – covered in spotless elbow-length white gloves – on her hips. ‘Liam?’
He shook his head. ‘You look so … so …’
‘Spit it out!’
‘Like … wel , like a lady, so you do.’
For a moment he thought she was going to step forward and punch his arm, like she was prone to do. Instead, her cheeks coloured ever so slightly. ‘Uh … real y?’
‘Aye.’ Liam smiled at her. ‘And me? What about me?’
Maddy grinned. ‘Wel , you look like an idiot.’
Liam pul ed the top hat o his head. ‘Ah, it’s that, isn’t it? Makes me ears stick out like a pair of jug handles.’
She laughed. ‘Don’t worry about it, Liam. Obviously it’s She laughed. ‘Don’t worry about it, Liam. Obviously it’s the fashion over here. You won’t be the only person wearing one.’
‘It was mostly at caps and forage caps back home. You tried wearing a top hat or a bowler, you were asking for some joker to try an’ knock it o .’
She pointed at him, ignoring the quip, her smile replaced with her let’s-get-down-to-business frown. ‘What time have you got on your clock?’
Liam pul ed the ornate timepiece out of his waistcoat pocket. ‘Seven minutes after eleven in the morning.’
‘OK, we should get a move on. The return window here is in four hours’ time.’
‘Right you are. How far is it?’
‘Not far, I think. It’s on to Merrimac Street, then up Fourth Street to Mission Street … short walk up that on to Second Street. Ten minutes … at a guess?’
Liam stepped forward away from the brick wal , the tumbled crates of rubbish and the stench of rot ing sh. With a broad cock-sided grin he o ered his arm. ‘Shal we, ma’am?’
Her face softened and she threaded one white gloved hand around it. ‘Oh, absolutely, Mr Darcy. A pleasure, I’m sure.’
They emerged out of the gloom of the al ey on to Merrimac Street and immediately Maddy found herself gasping.
My God. The realization nal y hit her. I’m actual y standing IN history.
standing IN history.
Merrimac Street was busy with mid-morning foot and wheeled tra c, mostly horse-drawn carts ferrying goods up from the wharf down the far end. She could make out steam ships lined up against the docks, l ing the blue sky with columns of coal smoke and steam, and the churning business of freight coming o or being loaded on.
‘Awesome,’ she giggled with delight, ‘this is just like being in a movie. Just like the beginning of Titanic …’
He looked at her, disgusted. ‘They made a movie about it?’The smile on her face slipped and became a guilty grimace.
Liam tut ed and sighed. ‘Good people died an’ al … for what? So they can become part of a ickering peepshow a hundred years later?’
She shrugged. ‘Uh, s’pose … but it was pret y good, though. Fantastic special e –’
His sideways scowl silenced her.
‘Never mind.’
They turned left on to the road, heading up it towards Fourth Street, dodging several piles of horse manure along the way. Fourth Street was a lit le busier, but nothing compared to Mission Street. The road was a broad thoroughfare, a hundred feet wide, thick with carts and pedestrians and a tram line that rat led with trams laden with passengers inside and hanging precariously on the back, dinging their bel s to clear the track ahead.
‘Oh my God, this is so amazing!’ she gushed.
‘Oh my God, this is so amazing!’ she gushed. Liam tugged her arm. ‘Shhh … you’re sounding like a tourist.’
Mission Street was anked with ve-and six-storey brick buildings, warehouses, o ces, factories, banks and legal rms. She caught sight of a tal building dominating the skyline – fteen, perhaps twenty storeys high that looked like a smal version of the Empire State Building.
‘I didn’t know they had skyscrapers back then … uhh …
I mean back now!’
Liam nodded. ‘Nothing like this in Ireland.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘And you’re tel ing me al this gets total y destroyed?’
‘Uh-huh. Tomorrow morning, April eighteenth, the great Californian earthquake. According to our history database, much of the downtown area is destroyed by the quake … and then the resulting re destroys most of what was left in this area … the fourth and fth districts.’
‘Jeeeez … that’s a real shame, so it is.’ Liam locked his brows for a moment. ‘Hang on! Strikes me as a bit stupid that the agency has picked here and now to store our supplies if it’s about to be brought crashing down.’
‘Wel , duh!’ said Maddy, making a face and rol ing her eyes. ‘Think about it! It makes perfect sense!’ She looked at him as if he’d just put on a pair of shoes the wrong way round. ‘Liam, I thought Foster said you’re meant to be smart?’
He pouted his lip, feigning hurt. ‘Wel , Miss Smarty Pants, you’re obviously itching to tel me something, so get Pants, you’re obviously itching to tel me something, so get on with it.’
She sighed. ‘It’s perfect, because the bank vault where our replacement engineered foetuses are located wil be completely destroyed in the re. Everything. Al the safe deposit boxes, their contents, al the client paperwork …
everything. No paper trail.’
Liam grinned. ‘Ah, very clever.’
‘Exactly.’
The hubbub on Mission Street was added to by the noisy clat er of a sput ering engine. Its noise blot ed out everything as it slowly approached them. They nal y saw the vehicle rol ing down the middle of the street on imsy spoked wheels, fol owing a man on foot waving a red warning ag before him.
‘Wow! I didn’t know they had cars then!’ Maddy shouted in his ear.
He shook his head. ‘Now who’s being dumb! Of course we did!’ He watched the vehicle slowly rat le past, steered by a man wearing a cap and goggles. Beside him sat a woman sporting a cloud of ostrich feathers above her head, her gloved hands clasped over her ears at the cacophony.
‘Now I know that’s an Oldsmobile Model R,’ added Liam as the vehicle nal y turned right o Mission Street and the laboured clat er of internal combustion al owed them to talk easily once more. ‘There were quite a few of those things dashing about Cork – yes, even Cork – when I left.’
left.’She shook her head. ‘Hardly dashing.’
They walked on another few minutes in silence, Maddy enjoying playing the lady in her own period-piece Hol ywood movie and Liam feeling like this was something of a trip home for him. Back to his time, back to a place where he could talk easily with anyone and not be made to feel like a complete moron for not knowing what a digicam was, or that Seven-Up wasn’t some kind of a bal game, or that a Snickers Bar wasn’t some sort of sleazy nightclub.
‘This is it,’ Maddy nal y said, pointing to a narrow side street. ‘There … Minna Street.’
They crossed the wide thoroughfare, dodging a tram clanging its way through the bustle of pedestrian tra c and sidestepping several more steaming hil ocks of horse manure. They stood in the mouth of the narrow road, only two carts wide and relatively quiet.
‘And that’s the building we want,’ she said, pointing to a formal-looking frontage of brick and granite. ‘Union Commercial Savings Company,’ she added. ‘According to Foster’s “how to” manual, this is the bank’s only premises. After the earthquake, the re destroys this building and everything inside it. The company was no more. As if it never existed.’ She looked at him. ‘You see? Perfect.’
‘And al our Baby Bobs are in some sort of safe down in its basement?’
‘That’s what Foster says.’
Liam frowned. ‘So, I’m being dumb again … but if Liam frowned. ‘So, I’m being dumb again … but if there’s a whole load of those lit le foetus things down there in a safe somewhere, what’s keeping them alive?
Would they not die and sort of go o ? Is there a refrigerating device down there?’
‘You’l see.’
CHAPTER 6
1906, San Francisco
Maddy strode down Minna Street towards the bank. ‘Come on.’Liam was struggling to keep up with her. ‘So, who put them in this bank? And when did they do it?’
She reached the front step of the Union Commercial Savings Company and stopped. ‘OK, Liam, just a second
…’ She pul ed her glasses and a scrap of paper covered with scribbled notes in her handwriting out of her handbag.
‘Oh Jay-zus … you brought notes back with you? Isn’t that not al owed? You know? Contamination of time an’
al ?’Maddy looked around the quiet street guiltily. ‘I know, I know … but there was way too much to remember. I was worried I’d forget something.’
‘Foster would throw a t if he knew you’d brought notes back here,’ said Liam.
‘Wel , he won’t, wil he?’ she mut ered impatiently.
‘Because he bailed out and left us to cope on our own.’
Liam shrugged at that.
She put her glasses on. ‘OK, so, my name is Miss Emily Lassiter. You’re my brother.’
Lassiter. You’re my brother.’
‘Do I get a name too?’
She sighed. ‘Yes … uhh … here it is, Leonard Lassiter. Al right?’
He nodded.
She scanned the notes further, digesting the information for a few moments before tucking them back in her bag and removing her glasses. ‘Al right, I think I’ve got it al .’
She looked at him. ‘You don’t have to say anything, OK?
Just go along with whatever I say.’
‘Wil do.’
She took a deep breath, then pushed the double door to the bank inwards. They stepped on to a tiled oor that echoed their footsteps around a hal , dark with oak panels. Ahead of them were half a dozen ornate mahogany desks, each with softly glowing green ceramic desk lamps. Behind each one sat a bank tel er, al but one busy dealing in hushed, respectful tones with customers.
Maddy led the way towards the unoccupied tel er, a young man with hair slicked down in a rigid centre parting and a careful y clipped and waxed moustache.
‘Uhh … ’scuse me?’ she said.
The young man looked up at her and smiled
charmingly. ‘Good morning, ma’am. How can I help you?
‘I’d like to speak with a Mr … uh … Mr Leighton. He works here, I think.’
‘Oh, I’m certain he works here, ma’am,’ said the young man. He tapped a wooden name-holder on the desk. ‘I’m Harold Leighton, you see? Please, wil you take a seat?’
Harold Leighton, you see? Please, wil you take a seat?’
Maddy smiled and slumped down in the seat a lit le too casual y then did her best to quickly recover her lady-like demeanour. ‘Much … uh … much obliged,’ she said as demurely as she could manage.
‘Now, ma’am, how could I assist you?’
She took a breath, hoping she was going to get this right and not sound half as nervous as she felt. ‘My family has a safe deposit box with your bank and I wish to make a withdrawal.’
‘Certainly, ma’am. The account is in the name of?’
‘Joshua Waldstein Lassiter.’
Harold Leighton’s eyebrows raised.
Her heart skipped. ‘Oh … is there a problem?’
‘Not a problem as such, ma’am. It’s just … I stil have the paperwork here on my desk.’
Maddy shook her head. ‘Paperwork?’
‘The paperwork set ing up the safe deposit account. Joshua Waldstein Lassiter, I presume he is your …?’
‘Uh? … My uh … yes, that’s right, my father.’
‘Wel , your father was here not more than an hour ago. Actual y, I dealt with him myself. He brought a very nice jewel ery box with him and we carried it down to the safe room and put it in a deposit box together … as I say, not more than an hour ago.’
‘Oh,’ was al she managed to say after a few moments.
‘Yes, wel , that’s quite right.’
‘And you wish to withdraw something from the safe deposit box already?’
deposit box already?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Wel … that is highly irregular.’
‘We’re a funny old family, us Lassiters,’ said Maddy, looking back over the chair. ‘Aren’t we, Liam?’
Liam stepped forward. ‘Oh yes, that we are, dear sister.’
He grinned at the tel er. ‘She sometimes cal s me Liam, although my name is in fact Leonard,’ he said, nudging the smal of her back.
Maddy mental y kicked herself for being such a dumbnuts.
‘You are brother and sister?’ Harold Leighton looked up at Liam. ‘And it seems you, sir, are Irish?’
‘Yes.’
‘But,’ he said, looking at Maddy, ‘it seems, ma’am, you’re not?’
‘I … uh …’ Maddy’s mouth apped uselessly. ‘Oh …’
‘I was brought up in Cork,’ cut in Liam. ‘My dear sister in California. Father likes to keep a home either side of the Atlantic, so he does.’
The young tel er cocked an eyebrow. ‘So it seems.’ He sighed and spread the bank account details out in front of him. ‘Wel , it appears your father did specify his children as fel ow signatories on the account, so … you, ma’am, I presume are Emily Lassiter?’
‘That’s correct,’ she replied.
‘For security reasons I have to ask you for the code word your father has put down here on this form to assure us you are in fact who you say you are.’
you are in fact who you say you are.’
‘Of course.’ She nodded. ‘It’s … it’s …’ She realized al of a sudden her mind had gone blank and cursed. The tel er’s jaw dropped open at her unladylike language. ‘Madam!’
Liam grinned sheepishly. ‘She’s spent time at sea. Picked up al sorts of dreadful language from the sailors, so she did. Father so hates her talking that way.’
‘Just a sec,’ said Maddy, fumbling in her handbag for her note. She quickly scanned her scribbled writing. ‘Ahh!
Here it is!’
She leaned forward over the desk. ‘The code word, Mr Leighton, is Hemlock.’
Leighton stared at her long and hard, suspicion clouding his young tel er’s eyes. Final y a cautious smile spread across his lips. ‘Yes, it is, Miss Lassiter. If you’l just sign here, I can take you down to the safe room.’
∗
The tel er spun a large brass wheel and slowly pul ed open the cast-iron door leading on to a smal room lined with numbered deposit boxes on three wal s. ‘Your safe deposit box is number three-nine-seven,’ he said, leading them to a locker with the number on its door. He inserted the key and twisted it once.
‘It is company policy, madam, sir, that I remain in the safe room while you inspect the contents of your deposit box. However, I shal remain over there by the door and I shal turn my back to al ow you a lit le privacy.’
Maddy nodded and smiled politely. ‘OK.’
Maddy nodded and smiled politely. ‘OK.’
She waited until Mr Leighton had crossed the room and was standing by the cast-iron door, casual y jangling the keys in one hand and examining his ngernails on the other.
‘Liam,’ she ut ered softly.
‘Yes?’
‘I think it’s best if you go talk to him, distract him. I don’t want him seeing anything he shouldn’t.’
He nodded. ‘Aye, you’re right.’ He wandered over and easily struck up a conversation with the young man while Maddy at ended to their business.
She pul ed the deposit box’s door open. The faint glow from the safe room’s overhead light showed her lit le of what was inside. Maddy pushed her hand into the darkness and almost immediately felt the side of a wooden box. She found a smal handle and pul ed it out. It was quite heavy, and as she hefted it out of the locker towards an inspection bench in the middle of the room, the young man cal ed out.‘Let me give you a hand with that, madam.’
‘I’m ne … I’m ne,’ she grunted.
‘Strong as an ox, so she is,’ Liam assured him. ‘She’l be al right.’ He resumed chat ing to Leighton, something about steam ships, from what she could hear. She studied the box. It certainly looked like a jewel ery box, about the size of a smal travel trunk, made of dark wood with silver buckles and ornate swirls along each side. She turned the box so that the upright lid would hide side. She turned the box so that the upright lid would hide what was inside from any prying eyes, and then slowly, careful y opened it.
‘Another box,’ she whispered. But this one was smooth, featureless, metal and cold to the touch.
Refrigerated. There had to be some kind of smal power unit or bat ery inside.
Her gloved ngers found a catch on the side and gently slid it back. Something inside the box clicked and the lid slowly raised with a barely audible hiss. A shal ow fog of nitrogen wafted out of the box revealing a row of eight glass tubes, each six inches long and a couple of inches wide. She eased one of the glass tubes out of its holder and, stil shielded by the lid of the jewel ery box, inspected it closely. Through the glass she could see the murky pink growth solution and the faint pale outline of a curled-up human foetus.
‘Hel o there, lit le baby Bobs!’ she cooed softly, waggling her ngers down at the frozen embryo. ‘Auntie Maddy’s here.’
The conversation in the corner was get ing quite animated. Clearly Leighton had a passion for new-fangled things like steam ships and automobiles. And Liam was playing along nicely.
Wel done, Liam.
She placed the glass tube back and closed the lid of the refrigerated case, lifting it out of the jewel ery box and into her bag. She was about to close the lid of the jewel ery box when she spot ed a scrap of paper at the jewel ery box when she spot ed a scrap of paper at the bot om. What she saw on it made her heart lurch. Her name.
A note for me?
She reached in and picked it up. Just a folded scrap of paper, a few words scrawled hurriedly on it. Maddy, look out for ‘Pandora’, we’re running out of time. Be safe and tel no one.
‘How’re you doin’, my dear sister?’ cal ed out Liam.
‘I’m good,’ she replied, grabbing the scrap of paper, bal ing it up and tucking it into one of her gloves. She closed the box and lifted it back into the locker, much lighter now. She closed the door. ‘I’m al done here, Mr Leighton!’
‘Ah, splendid!’ He came over with his jangling keys and locked the deposit box for her.
‘Everything al right?’
She glanced at Liam making a sil y face at her over Leighton’s shoulder.
‘Yes … yes, just ne, thank you.’
A minute later they were exiting the bank on to Minna Street once more, Liam holding the bag for her.
‘Nice enough chap,’ he said.
She turned to look at him. ‘A dozen hours from now he’l be dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘Dead?’
‘Yes, dead. That’s why the instructions said to ask for him speci cal y.’ She’d gured that out on the way back up the stairs. Because if anything happened, if the young man had caught a glimpse of anything inside the box, or heard either of them say anything suspicious … wel , he’d hardly have time to do anything with that knowledge, would he? The agency once again cleverly covering its tracks.
‘Jaayyzz. That seems not right to me,’ ut ered Liam. ‘Not to warn him somehow.’
Maddy didn’t like it either. ‘It’s how it is, Liam. It’s how it is.’
As they walked up Minna Street towards the main thoroughfare, Liam at empted to lift the mood. ‘You got our lit le babies?’
She nodded. ‘Al in there. Baby Popsicles.’
‘Baby what?’
CHAPTER 7
2015, Texas
Edward Chan and the rest of the touring party sat in the visitors’ reception room, munching on doughnuts and breakfast bagels and slurping orange juice from cartons as their tour guide, Mr Kel y, gave them an introductory presentation.
‘The Texas Advanced Energy Research Institute … or TERI, as we cal it for short, was established three years ago in 2012 when President Obama was re-elected. As you youngsters have been taught in school, the world is entering a new, tough and very chal enging time. The world’s population is nearly eight bil ion, carbon emissions have gone o the chart, the world’s traditional energy sources – oil and gas – are rapidly running out. We need to change the way we live or … wel , I’m sure you’ve seen enough doom and gloom forecasts on the news.’
He paused. The reception room was silent except for the shu ing of one or two feet and the slurping of orange juice through straws.
‘So, as you no doubt know, the institute was set up as part of the president’s advanced energy research programme. And over the last three years we’ve used the bil ions of dol ars of taxpayers’ money set aside by this bil ions of dol ars of taxpayers’ money set aside by this initiative to develop the wonderful facility you’re visiting today.
‘We have some of the nest quantum physicists and mathematicians working here, and most of our research work has been to do with a thing cal ed zero-point energy. I’m sure some of you must have heard that term in the news.’
Edward looked around at the other kids. A few heads were nodding uncertainly. One of them – a boy a couple of years older than him, short and chubby with curly ginger hair parted at the side and brutal y combed so that his hair kinked in waves to one side, reminding Edward of a Mr Whippy ice cream – raised a hand.
‘Yes, er …?’ said Mr Kel y, raising his eyebrows.
‘Franklyn.’
‘Go ahead, Franklyn.’
‘My dad says zero-point energy is just a bunch of wishful thinking. It’s like get ing something for nothing. And that’s impossible in physics, nothing’s free.’
Kel y laughed. ‘Wel , Franklyn, that’s a good point, but you see that’s exactly what it is. It is a free lunch. And the idea that there’s such a thing as a free lunch isn’t a new one either. Remember Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity. Wel , he argued that even in a complete vacuum there’s a great deal left there. It isn’t just empty space, there’s energy too, endless energy waiting to be tapped. Even the ancient Greeks suspected that we walk through an endless soup of energy. They cal ed it “ether”. But the an endless soup of energy. They cal ed it “ether”. But the trick, kids … the trick has always been being able to isolate it, to measure it. Since it exists everywhere, it’s homogenous, isotropic … That’s to say it’s uniformly the same everywhere and in every direction.’
The students stared at him in confused silence.
‘Trying to measure zero-point energy is a bit like trying to weigh a glass of water under the ocean. You know? It’s the same inside the cup as it is outside … and therefore since there’s no measurable di erence between what’s in and outside the cup, the logical statement to make would be the “cup has nothing in it”. Which would of course be wrong. So, we have a similar issue with measuring zeropoint energy. Only by creating a proper vacuum – and I don’t mean just sucking the air out of a space, I mean a proper space-time vacuum, a tiny one – can we observe what it is that remains.’ He smiled his polished public relations smile. ‘The energy itself.
‘And that’s what we have here at the TERI labs, a device that can create a proper space-time gap. A genuinely empty space.’
Another hand went up.
‘Yes?’
‘Keisha Jackson.’
‘Go ahead, Keisha.’
‘How big a hole have you got?’ asked the girl. ‘Is it big enough to step inside?’
‘Good Lord, no! No. It’s tiny. Very smal . It doesn’t need to be big. It’s a pinprick.’
to be big. It’s a pinprick.’
One of the boys at the back giggled.
‘Shortly, we’l be going through into the main laboratory, where you’l see the containment shielding that surrounds the area of experimentation. I believe the team is due to be opening a pinhole vacuum in the next halfhour.’ He splayed his hands. ‘Wanna go take a look-see?’
Every head in the room wagged enthusiastical y.
CHAPTER 8
1906, San Francisco
They returned to their al eyway with half an hour to spare, having spent an hour on the dockside watching the steam ships being loaded and unloaded, Maddy relishing every lit le detail of the past and giggling with unbridled delight as dockside workers knuckled their foreheads and do ed their caps at her politely as they walked past.
‘Oh my God! I feel like some sort of duchess!’ she whispered out of the side of her mouth to Liam as they turned into the al ey. ‘Everyone’s so … I dunno, so polite and proper back in this time.’
He nodded. ‘Especial y to a lady … like yourself.’ He nodded at her dress, her amboyant hat with its ostrich feathers. ‘Them clothes mark you out as a lady of means. You know? A real y posh lady, so you are. Now, if you’d found some dowdy dress that made you look common, them workers would’ve walked on past without a by-yourleave.’
‘Oh, right … thanks,’ she said.
Liam grimaced. ‘Ahhh, now see that came out al wrong-sounding, so it did. I didn’t mean to say it like that.’
‘No, you’re probably right,’ she hu ed. ‘I’ve always been plain-looking. I’m sure shoving on a fril y dress and some plain-looking. I’m sure shoving on a fril y dress and some stupid feather hat isn’t going to make much of a di erence.
’ They walked down the al ey, sidestepping a toppled crate of festering cabbages until they reached the spot where they’d materialized several hours earlier.
‘Seems harsh that, though,’ said Liam thoughtful y.
‘What?’
‘That fel a back there, Leighton. You sure he’l die?’
She nodded. ‘Yes … it makes sense.’ Yes, it did. But it was the feel of … the feel of … ruthlessness that gnawed away at her; the agency seemed to know everything about everyone – and exploited that knowledge mercilessly. In less than eighteen hours the young man she’d been talking to would be nothing more than a twisted black carcass amid the smouldering remains of that bank.
And I have to learn to deal with that, she told herself. Liam seemed to sense her turmoil. ‘Wel , this is the job now, Mads. We don’t have much of a choice in the mat er. Do we?’
She looked at him and realized it wasn’t just the young bank tel er that the agency was ruthlessly using, but Liam too. The side e ects weren’t apparent yet: the onset of cel ular corruption, the onset of premature old age. But they’d begin to show at some point, wouldn’t they? The more trips Liam was sent on into the past, the more damage it was going to do to his body, until, like Foster, one day he was going to be an old man before his time: his muscles wasted; his bones brit le, weakened and fragile; muscles wasted; his bones brit le, weakened and fragile; his organs irretrievably corrupted by the e ects of time travel and one by one beginning to fail him. She so wanted to tel him. To warn him.
How many more trips, Liam? How many before I’m looking at you and seeing a dying old man?
But she couldn’t. Not yet. Foster had told her it would be unkind for him to know his fate too early.
‘Let him enjoy the freedom of seeing history for a bit; seeing his future, his past … at least give him that for a while before you tel him he’s dying.’
Liam smiled his lopsided smile. On the face of a grown man, it might have been cal ed rakish, charming even. On him it looked just a lit le mischievous. ‘You al right there, Maddy?’
‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘Yeah … I’m ne.’
He let go of her arm and checked his timepiece. ‘Return window any second now.’
Almost on cue, a gentle breeze whistled up the al ey, sending the loose debris of rubbish skit ering along the cobble-stones. A moment later, the air several yards from them shimmered like a heat haze: a bal of air twelve feet in diameter, hovering a foot o the ground. Through the portal she could just make out the twisting, undulating shapes of the archway beyond and Sal waiting impatiently for them.
You have to tel him, sometime, Maddy. Tel him time travel wil slowly kil him.
She didn’t like the fact that Foster had left the decision She didn’t like the fact that Foster had left the decision to her. Having secrets like that, having something she couldn’t share with him or Sal.
And what about that note?
She could feel the lump of bal ed paper in her glove, something else she was being asked to keep from her friends. And why? And who was Pandora? She didn’t like that … it felt like she was being used.
What? Like you just used that young bank tel er?
‘Come on, then,’ said Liam, stepping forward with the jewel ery case in his hands.
‘Liam?’
He stopped. ‘What?’
She could tel him about the note. She could also tel him about the damage time travel was silently wreaking on him. That every time he went back in time subtle corruption was occurring to every cel in his body, ageing him long before his time. She decided she’d want to know, to know that every time she’d stepped through a portal she was knocking perhaps ve or ten years o her natural life. She’d want to at least be able to choose for herself whether she was prepared to make that sacri ce for the rest of mankind.
‘What is it, Mads?’
Or maybe Foster was right – she should keep the truth from him for as long as possible …
She pul ed her glasses out of her handbag and put them on, then took the sil y bonnet o her head with its long, ridiculous ostrich feathers. Al of a sudden, dressed in her ridiculous ostrich feathers. Al of a sudden, dressed in her tight corset and bil owing lace skirts, she felt dishonest, a phoney, a fake and, her eyes meeting Liam’s, she felt like a liar.A worn-thin smile spread across her face. ‘Nothing, Liam. Let’s go home, eh?’
CHAPTER 9
2001, New York
‘Are you sure?’ shouted Sal.
‘That’s what Bob says.’ Maddy’s voice echoed from the archway through the open door into the back room – ‘the hatchery’ as they cal ed it now. ‘He says to at ach the end of the protein-feed pipe to the growth candidate’s bel y but on.’
‘How do we do that?’ Liam replied. ‘It’s not like there’s a socket to screw the thing into.’ The smal slimy foetus squirmed gently in his hand, stirring in its slumber. He grimaced as it did, feeling smal fragile bones shift beneath its paper-thin skin.
It looked as vulnerable as a freshly hatched bird fal en from a nest, and yet he knew that this tiny, shifting, pale creature in the palm of his hand would soon be a sevenfoot-tal leviathan, bulging with genetical y enhanced muscles, with a deep, intimidating voice rumbling from a chest as broad as a beer barrel.
‘Bob says you need to push the feed pipe through the bel y but on,’ Maddy’s voice came back.
Sal’s lip curled. ‘You mean … like … as if we’re stabbing it?’ she cal ed out.
‘Wel , obviously don’t stab it with the pipe!’ Maddy’s
‘Wel , obviously don’t stab it with the pipe!’ Maddy’s voice echoed back. ‘Gently do it!’
Liam looked at Sal and shook his head. ‘I can’t do it. I’d be sick. Here …’ He passed the foetus to Sal.
‘Oh, right … thanks, Liam.’
Sal cradled the thing in her hand and then gingerly reached into the perspex growth tube beside them to retrieve the feed pipe dangling down inside. She grimaced as she fumbled in the slimy growth solution, nal y pul ing out the tip of the feed pipe. As the slime dripped like mucus from the end of it, she could see the pipe ended with a sharpened tip.
‘Bob says you shouldn’t have to push too hard. The bel y but on skin is very thin and should … Oh, that’s just gross …’ Maddy’s voice faded away.
‘What?’ cal ed out Liam. Maddy didn’t answer immediately.
‘Maddy?’ chirped Sal. ‘What’s gross?’
‘He says the skin should pop just like a blister.’
Liam looked sheepishly at Sal. ‘Real y, I can’t do it. I’d be … I’l be sick over the poor lit le fel a.’
‘Shadd-yah,’ Sal mut ered, ‘you are hopeless sometimes.’
She took the end of the pipe between her ngers and gently drew it up until it hovered an inch above the foetus’s tiny bel y: translucent skin criss-crossed with a faint spider’s web of blue veins and a smal inward twist of rubbery skin.
She took a deep breath. ‘OK … here goes.’
She gently pressed the sharp end of the feed pipe into She gently pressed the sharp end of the feed pipe into the smal whirl of esh. The foetus shuddered in her hand; nger-length arms and legs suddenly ailing, its walnutsized head slapping against the palm of her hand.
‘Uh … Maddy! It doesn’t like it! It’s struggling!’
‘Bob says that’s perfectly normal … just push it in until the skin pops.’
She heard Liam mut er something about Jesus before his legs buckled beneath him and he sat down heavily on the oor, then slid over on to his side.
‘I think Liam’s just fainted!’ shouted Sal.
‘Never mind him,’ Maddy replied. ‘We need to get the foetus hooked up before it starts starving.’
‘OK, OK.’
She pushed the tip against the bel y but on again, this time pushing despite the foetus’s protests, until she felt the skin give way, as promised, with a soft pop. A smal trickle of dark blood oozed out on to its bel y.
‘It’s in!’
‘Right, now, put bonding tape round the pipe and its bel y to hold it in place.’
Sal picked up a rol of tape and wound it round as the thing squirmed indignantly in her hand.
‘OK. What next?’
‘Just lower it into the growth tube.’
Sal stepped towards the plastic cylinder and lifted the foetus up over the open top. ‘OK, Bob Junior,’ she ut ered.
‘See you again in a lit le while.’
Gently she lowered the foetus into the murky gunk and Gently she lowered the foetus into the murky gunk and then let it sink. It set led down through the pink soup, like a descending globule of wax in a lava lamp, until the feed pipe drew taut and it came to a rest.
‘OK, he’s in!’
‘Now close the growth-tube lid and activate the system pump!’
Sal closed the tube’s metal lid and clamped it in place. She squat ed down to inspect the panel at the bot om of the tube. There wasn’t much to see down there. A manufacturer’s name – WG Systems – and a smal touch screen. She tapped the screen and it lit up.
[Filtration system active]
[Set system to GROWTH or STASIS?]
‘It’s asking me to set it to growth or stasis … shal I pick growth?’
Maddy’s answer echoed back from the archway a moment later. ‘Growth for this one.’
Sal tapped GROWTH and con rmed the instruction. Immediately she heard the soft hum of a motor whirring to life somewhere at the bot om of the tube. A light winked on inside, making the pink protein glow and lighting the foggy form of the foetus from below. She could see its struggling form set le, content now that it was get ing its feed despite the earlier discomfort of having the tube pushed into its bel y.
‘Al done!’
‘Good. Now we’ve got to do the same thing for the others. Only we’l be set ing those to stasis.’
others. Only we’l be set ing those to stasis.’
Sal looked down at the open case on the oor, and the other vials containing growth candidates. Then she looked at Liam, stil out for the count, his face resting against the cold concrete oor amid a smal pool of spit le and vomit.
‘Great. Thanks for the help, Liam.’
‘Bl f i f wheeeel y gloob!’ said Liam, his mouth ful to bulging.
Both girls looked at him. ‘What?’
Liam chewed vigorously for a moment, then nal y swal owed. ‘I said this is real y good! What is it?’
‘Lamb korma,’ replied Sal. ‘It’s nothing like how Mum used to make it back home. You have it much sweeter over here. I suppose Americans like their food real y sweet?’
Maddy nodded. ‘Sweeter the bet er. I could live just on chocolate.’ She reached across their table and pul ed a carton of mango chutney out of the brown paper takeaway bag.Liam hungrily loaded another forkful of korma into his mouth.
Across the archway, music streamed from the computer. Maddy had an Internet radio station playing music she remembered her parents listening to: the Corrs, REM, Counting Crows.
‘It’s kind of weird just us three, though,’ said Sal. ‘I miss Foster.’
‘Me too,’ said Maddy.
‘We’re never going to see him again, are we?’
‘We’re never going to see him again, are we?’
She shrugged. ‘Probably not. He had to go.’
‘Why?’ asked Liam.
She hesitated a moment. ‘He was sick.’
‘Yeah,’ said Sal thoughtful y. ‘He didn’t look wel .’
‘What was wrong with him?’
Maddy played with the rice on her plate for a moment.
‘Cancer. He was dying of cancer. He told me that.’
‘Poor, poor fel a,’ sighed Liam. ‘I real y liked him. Reminded me a bit of my grandfather, so he did.’
They ate in silence for a moment.
‘It’s strange, though,’ said Sal. ‘We’re part of this … this agency, but it doesn’t feel like we’re part of anything, if you know what I mean.’
‘I know what you mean,’ said Liam. ‘Like it’s just the three of us in this lit le archway al on our own. No contact with anyone else.’ He looked up at Maddy. ‘Did he not say there were other groups like us? Other eld o ces?’
She nodded. ‘He did.’
‘But we never ever hear from them. There’s no information about them, or about this agency. No one has contacted us, right?’
‘No one.’
Sal put down the poppadom she’d been holding. ‘What if it real y is just us, just us alone … here?’
The other two looked at her.
‘What if we are the agency?’ she added.
Liam’s eyebrows arched and his jaw dropped open. Liam’s eyebrows arched and his jaw dropped open.
‘God help us al if that’s the case.’
Maddy shook her head. ‘It’s not just us. Someone else stashed those foetuses back in 1906, right?’
‘Could that not have been Foster?’
‘Could be.’ Maddy shrugged. ‘But then you’ve got to ask who genetical y engineered the foetuses? That’s got a need other people, some facility somewhere.’ The other two had no answer for that. ‘Fact is,’ she continued, ‘there’s more to this agency than just us. There are others out there somewhere or somewhen.’
‘So how do we talk with them?’ asked Sal. ‘How can we meet them?’
‘I think that’s exactly the point. I think we’re not supposed to.’ Maddy slurped her Dr Pepper. ‘Maybe we’re a bit like some sort of terrorist organization; for al of our safety, no one group can know where another group is. We operate in isolation. It’s just us … until …’ Her words tailed o and they sat in silence for a while contemplating where that sentence ended.
‘Not much chance of a big Christmas get-together, then?’
mut ered Liam.
Maddy snorted drink on to the table, relieved that he’d found a way to break the sombre mood.
‘At least,’ said Sal, ‘we’l have a brand-new Bob to protect us soon.’
‘Aye. I miss the big ape.’
Maddy pointed to the bank of computer monitors. ‘He’s just there!’
just there!’
‘Naw,’ said Liam, wrinkling his nose, ‘it’s not quite the same him being in there.’
‘You can’t exactly hug a computer monitor,’ said Sal. Liam chuckled. ‘Quite right. I miss his tufty round coconut head.’
‘And that dumb, total blip-head expression on his face,’
added Sal.
‘Aye.’
Maddy nished a mouthful of curry. ‘Wel , we’l have him around soon. Foster’s “how to” manual says the growth cycle should take about one hundred hours.’ She pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘Lemmesee … that’s just over four days.’
‘We’l need some new clothes for him,’ said Sal. ‘I’l see what I can nd for him downtown tomorrow.’
Maddy nodded. ‘Good idea.’
They nished the Indian takeaway and bagged up the rubbish. Liam volunteered to take it out as the girls changed for bed. He crossed the archway oor, crisscrossed with snaking power cables, and lifted the front shut er enough to duck under and step out into their backstreet.
A ickering blue light dimly lit the street. Above him, bright halogen oodlights il uminated the thick metal spars of the Wil iamsburg Bridge arcing across the at docile water of the Hudson River. On the far side – a sight he was stil yet to get used to – was Manhat an, a vibrant inverted crystal chandelier of winking city lights and inverted crystal chandelier of winking city lights and nudging tra c.
He dropped the bag into the trash can, and sucked in the cool night air.
Tonight al was wel with the world. Tomorrow was the day planes crashed into buildings and the sky was a dark smudge al of the day.
He hated the Tuesdays.
‘Good night, New York,’ he ut ered under his breath. The city replied with the rumble of a train along the bridge overhead and the echoing, distant wail of a police siren racing through a Brooklyn street several blocks away. As he prepared to duck back inside and wind the shut er down once more, he found himself wondering if Sal was right. If they real y were alone. If the agency was, in fact, just them.
As it happened, the answer to that speci c question was to arrive the very next morning.
CHAPTER 10
2001, New York
Maddy was entirely engrossed in Big Brother USA when Bob interrupted. She’d been watching Nicole and Hardy quietly plot ing together in the kitchen against the other two. It was a rerun of the previous week’s shows on FOX
and she already knew who was facing imminent eviction. She’d seen this show at least four times already, but for some reason, despite knowing the outcome, it was stil compulsive viewing.
So it was with mild irritation that she answered the dialogue box that had popped up on the monitor over the top of Big Brother.
> Maddy?
She sat forward and spoke into the desk mic rather than tap out an answer on the keyboard.
‘What is it, Bob? I’m watching Big Brother right now.’
> I am picking up incoming tachyon particles. Her mouth dropped open and she dribbled milk and Rice Krispies on to her T-shirt.
‘You’re kidding me, right?’
> Kidding?
‘Joking.’
> Not joking, Maddy. There is a directed
> Not joking, Maddy. There is a directed
communication beam coming in from down-time.
‘From down-time … You mean the future?’
> A rmative.
Maddy dropped her spoon back in the breakfast bowl and sat back in her chair. She looked around. Liam was stil fast asleep on his bunk and Sal was out clothes shopping for Bob.
Oh my God … a message from the future?
She realized then and there that it could only be from the agency – their rst contact with the rest of the organization – and just when they were real y beginning to wonder whether the three of them were al on their own.
‘What’s the message, Bob?’
> Just a moment … just a moment. Decoding …
Sal had decided not to bother going uptown, over the bridge into Manhat an. The clothes shops there were al modern chain stores and none of them were likely to have much that would t a seven-foot mountain of muscle. Instead she headed into Brooklyn, an area she hadn’t explored at al thus far. Foster had been so very keen on her focusing her at entive eyes on Manhat an and Times Square – taking in every tiny detail until she knew everything that was meant to be there, every tiny event that was meant to happen – that she’d had no time to explore the city this side of the Hudson River. Away from the bridge and South 6th Street, she found myriad quieter backstreets, and one in particular lined myriad quieter backstreets, and one in particular lined with odd lit le boutiques sel ing second-hand furniture and dusty old books. The chaos of goods piled outside the storefronts and clut ering the narrow street reminded her vaguely of the market-place near her home in Mumbai. She found herself wiping a solitary tear from her cheek and chided herself for crying for her parents … because –
stupid – they weren’t dead. The grim fate that awaited them wasn’t going to happen for another twenty-ve years. At this moment in time, her mum and dad were just kids her age, enjoying their childhood and not due to meet for another decade yet. Strange, that. Stood side by side, she and her mum could probably pass as sisters.
Her at ention was drawn to a shop with a curious mix of antique knick-knacks spil ing out of its entrance and on to the pavement. Ancient-looking wooden furniture, a rocking-horse and clothes that looked like surplus theatrical costumes. But among them, bric-a-brac, a secondhand TV set, a toaster, a Dyson vacuum cleaner. A lit le bit of everything, it seemed.
She gured she had as much chance of nding
something here that might t Bob as she might anywhere else and, anyway, everything here appeared to be pret y cheap. She stepped inside the boutique and squeezed through the front of the store, clut ered with a set of chrome bar stools and several aking display-window mannequins wearing dodgy-looking leather corsets and feather boas.
‘May I help you, young lady?’
‘May I help you, young lady?’
The voice seemed to come out of nowhere and she jumped. Then she spot ed a tiny old lady with jet-black hair who was even shorter than she was.
‘I, uh … You made me jump.’
She smiled. ‘I’m sorry, my dear. I do tend to blend into the store.’
Sal laughed. She could imagine a customer slapping ten dol ars down on the counter for the ‘realistic old lady mannequin’, tucking her under one arm and walking out with her.
‘What are you after, my dear?’
‘You have a clothes section?’
She waved an arm. ‘At the back. I have racks and racks of old, old clothes and party costumes. Lots of cast-outs from the Broadway theatres and a few antique items too.’
‘Thank you.’
Sal weaved her way further into the store, her nose tickled and teased by the dust that seemed to be on everything and the faint smel of mothbal s and turpentine. She found the clothes racks at the back and almost found herself giggling at the bizarre mix of garments on display. She icked through the racks in front of her, chuckling at some of the exotic costumes and cooing appreciatively at others. Eventual y she found some things that looked suitable for Bob: a baggy pair of striped trousers with extra-long legs that she suspected might have been part of a clown’s out t at one time and an extra-large bright orange and pink Hawai an shirt that looked like it might orange and pink Hawai an shirt that looked like it might just about t over the top of his broad shoulders and rippling muscles.
‘You must have a very big friend,’ said the old lady as she took Sal’s payment and folded the clothes into a plastic bag for her.
‘Uncle,’ she replied. ‘My Uncle Bob. He’s a very big man.’ Sal was about to add that he was also pret y dumb as wel – dumb, and kind of child-like – when she spot ed something dangling from a hanger on one wal : a white tunic, but oned down the left side, with an emblem on the chest that she recognized – the White Star lines. It was a steward’s tunic just like Liam’s.
She pointed at it. ‘Is that … is that a uniform from the Titanic?’
The old woman looked round at where she was
pointing. ‘Oh, that? No, it would be worth a lot more if it was genuine. I could sel it to a museum or a col ector for thousands of dol ars. Unfortunately it’s not; it’s just a theatre costume. Not a very wel -made costume either. Friends of mine … they did a production set on the Titanic. It didn’t do very wel . You want to have a look at it?’Sal shook her head. She could’ve said something about it being a funny coincidence that her bunk-buddy was a young lad who’d actual y worked on the ship for real. The old lady would think her mad, of course, or that she was just being cheeky. Mind you, in just over half an hour’s time, when the rst plane hit the Twin Towers, whatever time, when the rst plane hit the Twin Towers, whatever odd conversation she might have now would be instantly forgot en.
Sal returned to the archway with Bob’s clothes and some groceries before the rst plane hit and the Manhat an sky started to l with smoke. She was about to mention the coincidence to Liam – the steward’s tunic exactly like his – when she realized by the expressions on Maddy’s and Liam’s faces that something important had just happened. She forgot al about it.
CHAPTER 11
2001, New York
‘It’s a message from the agency,’ said Liam as Sal joined them beside the computer desk. ‘From the future.’
‘So.’ Sal looked at them both. ‘There’s our answer. We’re not alone, then.’
‘Yup!’ replied Maddy, grinning, clearly the most encouraged and excited by that news. ‘Bob’s decoding the message right now. He’s estimated the year of origin to be about 2056. That’s the time of Roald Waldstein, the inventor of time-travel technology.’
‘Do you think it’s him? The Waldstein fel a?’ asked Liam.
Maddy reached for her inhaler on the desk and took a quick pu on it. ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Hopeful y it’s the agency checking in with us. You know? Seeing if we’re OK. Which would be nice.’
‘But how …’ started Liam, frowning. ‘But how wil we talk back to them? These tachyon signal things can only go backwards in time, right? That’s what Foster said.’
‘He said that … but he was keeping it simple. It takes a lot more energy to project forward. Plus, more importantly, in 2056, everyone’s on the lookout for tachyon particles, right, Bob?’
tachyon particles, right, Bob?’
> Correct. A signal aimed at the agency could be detected and reveal its location. In 2056, international laws against time travel have been established.
‘In any case, I wouldn’t know which direction to point a signal,’ said Maddy. ‘Who knows where in the world they’re based?’
‘So is there a way to talk back?’ asked Liam. Maddy nodded. ‘Yup … there is.’ There was an entry in Foster’s ‘how to’ guide on how to contact the agency, a short explanation by Foster looking ten years younger as he spoke to the webcam. An entry he must have recorded much earlier than the others.
‘It’s the same principle, Liam, that you used actual y,’
said Maddy. ‘The museum guest book, remember? Only it’s a New York newspaper. We place an advert in the lonely hearts section of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. It has to begin with the phrase “a soul lost in time …”’
Liam clicked his ngers; he understood the rest. ‘And I suppose they have a crinkly old yel owing copy of that paper?’
‘Dated September twelfth, 2001. That’s right.’
Sal looked from one to the other, her eyes widening.
‘And … and do you mean the words in the paper change?
They actual y change on the page?’
Maddy nodded. ‘It’s a tiny ripple in time. Nothing that would change anything else. After al … who’s going to be reading the lonely hearts section of the papers tomorrow?’
‘The papers would be ful of that plane-crashing-into-‘The papers would be ful of that plane-crashing-intobuilding story, wil they not?’ said Liam.
‘Exactly. Our lit le advert won’t be noticed by anyone, except, of course … a bunch of people careful y studying a page of a fty-ve-year-old newspaper in 2056, or thereabouts.’ Maddy clucked with excitement. ‘I can’t tel you how freakin’ relieved I am that there’s somebody else out there!’
Liam nodded at the screen in front of her. ‘Looks like Bob’s done.’
> I have decoded the message, Maddy.
‘What is it?’
> It is only a partial message. The signal has been interrupted.
‘Uh? OK … give us what you’ve got, Bob.’
Words spooled across the dialogue box:
> Contamination event. Origin time appears to be 10.17 a.m. 18 August 2015. Major contamination ripples. Signi cant realignment of time stream. Death of Edward Chan, author of original theory on time travel, resulting in failure to write thesis in 2029. Death may have been deliberate assassination at empt. Occurred while visiting Instit–The three of them waited for a moment for Bob to print out more of the message.
> That is al I have. The partial ends there.
‘That’s it?’
> That is it, Maddy.
She turned to look at the others. ‘Er … what the hel are She turned to look at the others. ‘Er … what the hel are we supposed to make of that?’
They sat in silence for a while, digesting the smal block of text on the screen. Final y Liam shrugged. ‘That they’re in trouble?’
‘Wel , duh,’ sighed Maddy.
‘They need our help?’ said Sal.
‘But can we help, though?’ said Liam. ‘Can I go into the future?’
‘Of course you can.’ Maddy pinched the tip of her nose thoughtful y. ‘Think about it. Every time we bring you back from a mission in the past, you’re going forward in time, aren’t you?’
> This is correct. A mission operative can travel forward and backwards. However, energy expenditure is signi cantly higher moving forward.
Sal looked at the other two. ‘But maybe there are other eld o ces further in the future than us who wil deal with this?’
Liam nodded. ‘She’s right. If we’re not the only team, then perhaps somebody else is closer in time?’
Maddy gave it a moment’s thought. ‘Then why direct the message right at us? I mean … right here, right now?’ She turned back to the desk. ‘Bob, was this a broad-spectrum signal beam, sent out for everybody to pick up …
anywhere … anywhen?’
> Negative. It was a narrow, focused beam.
‘Meaning it was meant for us?’
> That is the logical assumption, Maddy.
> That is the logical assumption, Maddy.
‘But surely there are other teams in the future,’ said Sal.
‘Somebody closer in time and –’
‘Maybe there are,’ cut in Maddy, ‘but any eld o ce based after –’ she looked at the screen – ‘after the eighteenth of August 2015 is going to be a ected by the time wave also, right?’ She stared at the other two. ‘So maybe we’re the closest una ected team? Maybe we’re the eld o ce closest before this date?’
Liam sighed. ‘Aw, come on. Why is it us again? We only just got ourselves xed up after the last bleedin’ mess and a half.’
> Hel o, Liam. I have a question.
‘Good mornin’, Bob.’
> Is ‘bleedin’ a reference to the high body count of the last mission including the extensive damage to my last organic support frame? Or is it an expression of anger I should add to my language database?
‘It’s Liam being al stressy,’ said Maddy.
> Angry?
‘That’s right.’
Once again they stared in silence at the partial message displayed on the screen, al of them silently hoping it would just go away or change into another message simply welcoming them to the agency.
‘It’s for us, isn’t it?’ said Sal after a while. ‘We’ve got to x this time problem like we did the last one.’
Maddy nodded. ‘I think so.’
Liam’s jaw set rmly. ‘Wel , I’m not going anywhere Liam’s jaw set rmly. ‘Wel , I’m not going anywhere
’less I’ve got Bob coming with me. I mean that, so I do.’
‘OK,’ said Maddy. ‘That’s only fair.’ She turned round to face the computer monitors. ‘Bob, can we speed up the growth cycle of the foetus we’ve started o ?’
> A rmative. Increase the nutrient mix of the feed solution. Introduce a smal electrical charge to the suspension uid to stimulate cel activity.
‘How quickly can we have a body ready for you?’
> Growth cycle can be increased by 100% with acceptable risk to the biological life form.
‘Half the time,’ said Maddy. ‘That’s stil … what? Thirtyeight hours?’
> Correct.
‘Could we not birth the clone any earlier?’ added Liam. He looked at Maddy and shrugged. ‘I mean, does it need to be a ful y grown man?’
> Optimal age for organic support unit is approximately 25 years old. Muscle tissue and internal healing systems are at their most functional.
‘But, as Liam says, could we eject the clone from the tube at a younger age? Or would that … I dunno, kil it?’
> Negative. A growth candidate can be functional from approximate age of 14 onwards. However, the support unit’s e ectiveness would be compromised.
‘What does that mean?’ asked Liam.
‘It means Bob won’t be quite as big a brute as he was last time,’ said Sal.
‘So … what if we birth the clone at say … about
‘So … what if we birth the clone at say … about eighteen years of age,’ asked Maddy. ‘How useful would he be?’> An eighteen-year-old clone would o er approximately 50% of normal operational capacity.
‘He’d be half as strong?’ said Liam.
Maddy nodded. ‘And how much time would that save us o the growth cycle?’
> 14 hours.
She looked round at the others. ‘What do you reckon?’
‘We speed up the growing process and then empty him out on to the oor twenty-four hours from now?’ said Liam. ‘And we’l have an eighteen-year-old Bob, with half the muscles?’
‘That’s about it.’
‘But he’l stil be dangerous to other people, right? I mean … doesn’t make any sense me having him by my side if he’s just –’
> A rmative, Liam. I wil be capable of causing death with or without weapons.
Liam managed a weak smile. ‘Then I guess it’d be good to have you back, Bob.’
> Thank you. I look forward to being ful y operational again.
Maddy slapped her hand on the desk. ‘Right, then. I guess we have a plan of action. Since we’ve got no time to waste, Sal, could you go see to the growth candidate? Let’s get that process sped up.’
‘OK.’
‘OK.’
‘And I guess I bet er start gathering al the data I can on this Edward Chan guy,’ she said, pecking at the computer’s keyboard.
‘What about me?’ asked Liam.
Maddy tapped her ngers absentmindedly on the desk.
‘Er … hel , I don’t know.’
‘I suppose I’m co ee-maker?’
She smiled. ‘If you’re doing a run to Starbucks, can you grab me a chocolate-chip mu n as wel ?’
‘Yeah, me too,’ cal ed Sal from the back room’s doorway.
CHAPTER 12
2001, New York
‘So, this is what I’ve got,’ said Maddy, producing several sheets of computer printout.
This evening the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant’s eating area was deserted apart from them. Brooklyn’s streets were quiet, everyone back home now that the last light of the evening had gone. Al home, watching the news on their TV sets. Today’s sky had been divided al day by the thick column of black smoke from the col apsed Twin Towers, and New Yorkers were emerging from the fog of shock and dismay at the day’s events to a mood of contemplation and mourning.
They were lucky to nd even this place open. Only a couple of sta seemed to be on, and they were busy half the time watching the news updates on a smal TV set up right on the counter.
‘Edward Chan, as you guys wil remember Foster tel ing us, is this bright young maths kid who went to the University of Texas. He graduated there, then went on to do some post-grad work.’
‘What is that … what’s post-grad?’
‘It’s just more studying, Liam. The kind of studying where you tel your teachers what speci c area you intend where you tel your teachers what speci c area you intend researching, and they just check in with your work every now and then, and help out if they can.
‘So anyway,’ she continued, looking down at the printouts and reading, ‘at the university he sets out to do a research paper on zero-point energy.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Jeez, Liam … are you going to keep stopping me to ask what stu is?’
He looked hurt. ‘I’ve got to learn al these modern words, right? I mean, I’m stil real y just a lad from Cork who’s running to catch up on the last century, so I am.’
Maddy sighed. ‘It’s sort of like energy that’s supposed to exist at a sub-atomic level. It was stil just theoretical mumbo … jumbo in my time.’
‘I think they started building something to do with that in India in my time,’ said Sal. ‘Experimental reactor or something, because we were running out of oil and stu .’
Maddy scooped up some fries from her box. ‘Anyway, if I can continue, Liam? Chan set out to do a paper on zeropoint energy and ended up changing course. Instead he wrote a paper on the theoretical possibility of time travel. The main point he was making in his work was that the theoretical energy that was assumed to be there in normal space-time, the sub-atomic energy-soup that was meant to be everywhere, was in fact a form of “leakage” from other dimensions. He writes this science paper and does nothing else notable until his death from cancer a few years later at the age of twenty-seven.’
the age of twenty-seven.’
‘So, like Foster told us,’ said Liam, ‘this Chan lad is the true inventor of time travel, not the Waldstein fel a?’
‘Wel , he did the theoretical work that led to Waldstein’s machine, so I guess they’re both responsible for inventing it.’
‘The message from the agency said he’d been
assassinated,’ said Sal.
Maddy nodded. ‘Which means … what?’ She looked at both of them. ‘I’m guessing it means someone is trying to prevent time travel being invented?’
Liam reached for a ketchup sachet. ‘So … hold on. Isn’t that what the Waldstein fel a wanted in the rst place? To make sure time travel never got invented. Isn’t that why this agency thing exists, why the three of us’re here instead of dead?’
‘So why would the agency want us to save Chan?’ asked Sal. ‘I mean … no Chan means no time travel, right? That means no more time problems.’
‘S’right.’ Liam raised a nger. ‘The message didn’t actual y tel us to save him.’
Maddy leaned forward. ‘It was an incomplete message. Maybe that’s the bit we missed at the end?’
‘But we don’t know that for sure,’ replied Sal. ‘Maybe it was someone from the future let ing us know that time up ahead was changing and that there was now no more need for the agency … for us?’
Maddy shook her head and pointed to the message printed out on paper. ‘Look … it begins with printed out on paper. ‘Look … it begins with
“contamination event”. I’d say that suggests they considered this to be a bad thing. And they’re not too happy about it.’
They were silent for a moment, al three of them staring at the printed words on the page, trying to determine the intent of the message.
‘Foster was very, very speci c about this,’ said Maddy after a while. ‘History must go a certain way, for good or bad. Even if the history yet to happen features some kid cal ed Chan who makes time travel possible … that’s the way it has to be. And if it changes from that, the agency has to x it.’
Liam nodded after a few moments. ‘I suppose you’re right. So … do we know where his death is going to happen?’
‘The date in the message is August eighteenth. In our database it mentions Chan was one of a class of highschool students who were on a eld trip to the Texas Advanced Energy Research Institute, on this date. This is biographical data on Chan taken from 2056. If this real y is an assassination at empt by somebody, the chances are they have access to the same data as us. In other words, they looked at Chan’s biography and noted he was going to be at a particular place at a particular time …’
‘And sent themselves back in time to be there waiting with a gun,’ added Liam.
Maddy nodded. ‘Yup.’
‘Wel …’ Liam bit his lip anxiously. ‘You can see now why I’m so bleedin’ keen to have big ol’ Bob by my side. why I’m so bleedin’ keen to have big ol’ Bob by my side. Seems these bad guys have got guns with them and Bob’s a dab hand at dealing with people like that, so he is.’
Maddy glanced at her watch. ‘We should probably get back to the arch. The time bubble is due to ip over in a few hours and we could al do with some rest. Bob’s new body should be ready to birth tomorrow morning and then we’l be ready to send you guys forward in time to see what’s what.’
Liam sighed. ‘Back in that ol’ bathtub for me.’
CHAPTER 13
2001, New York
Sal stared at the curled-up form in the growth tube in stunned silence for a good minute before she nal y gasped. ‘Oh no.’
By the dim red light of the back room and the peachcoloured glow of the tube’s interior up-light she could see they’d real y messed up with growing Bob’s body. Wel , actual y … it looked like she alone had messed things up. They’re going to be mad at me.
Maddy’s voice echoed through the open door into the back room. ‘How’s he looking?’
Sal didn’t know what to say. So she said nothing.
‘Everything OK in there?’
They’ve got to nd out sometime.
‘Uhh … no. Not real y,’ she replied.
‘What’s the mat er?’ Maddy’s head appeared in the doorway, squinting into the gloom of the hatchery. ‘Sal?
What’s up?’
‘It’s uh … it’s Bob …’ she said.
‘Oh God, what now? It’s not a mis-growth, is it? We can’t a ord to start o another one.’
Sal had caught a glimpse of the few mis-growths that had been oating in the tubes back here not long after had been oating in the tubes back here not long after Foster had recruited them; they’d looked like awful freakshow specimens in some carnival tent, contorted, with faces like gargoyles and demons and limbs twisted into impossible claw-like stumps. She thanked God it wasn’t something like that.
‘No, it’s grown just ne … it’s just …’
Maddy took a cautious step into the hatchery, her eyes yet to adjust to the dim red lighting. ‘Wel , it looks OK
from here. Two arms, two legs … nothing weird and gross sticking out,’ she said.
Sal studied the adult-sized form oating in the murky pink soup. ‘I think I must have put the wrong foetus in or something,’ she ut ered.
Maddy took a few steps across the oor, careful not to hook her foot in a power cable and pul over one of the other tubes holding the other tiny foetuses in stasis.
‘Come on, Sal, what’s the prob–’ Maddy’s voice tailed away as she stood beside her. ‘Oh,’ she whispered. ‘I see now.’
Sal bit her lip. ‘I … I must have … I’m sorry. I didn’t check it rst. I … just didn’t see.’
Maddy looked at her. ‘You didn’t see?’
‘They al looked the same!’ Sal replied, her voice rising in pitch. ‘Look, I’m sorry!’
‘Oh, that’s just great, Sal. Just great! Now what are we going to do!’
‘I’m sorry, OK? Sorry. I didn’t see. I just –’
‘Sorry … is that it? Sorry doesn’t help us. There’s no
‘Sorry … is that it? Sorry doesn’t help us. There’s no time to grow another one!’
Liam stepped into the back room. ‘Hey! Ladies, ladies!
Whatever is the mat er?’
‘Wel , why don’t you come and look for yourself,’
snapped Maddy irritably.
Liam made his way cautiously forward until he was standing between them.
‘Meet your new support unit,’ she added sarcastical y. Liam frowned at the dim outline in the tube, then suddenly his eyebrows shot up into twin arches. ‘It’s a …
it’s a … it’s a …’
‘Girl,’ said Sal helpful y.
‘Oh Jay-zus-’n’-Mother-Mary … I never knew we got baby boys and girls.’
Maddy reached down to the oor and picked up one of the empty glass containers the foetuses had come in. She held it close to the growth tube to take advantage of some of the softly glowing light coming from within.
‘There,’ she said after a while, her nger pointing at a smal marking at the bot om of the glass.
Sal leaned closer, screwing her eyes up to see it bet er in the dim light.
‘It says XX … that’s al . What’s that supposed to mean?’
Maddy tut ed and shook her head. ‘You don’t know?’
‘No.’
Liam shrugged. ‘Me neither,’ he said, his eyes stil locked on the naked female form inside the tube.
‘It means female. And XY means male. You guys can be
‘It means female. And XY means male. You guys can be real morons! It’s to do with the chromosomes.’
Liam managed to drag his eyes away. ‘Cromer-what-ama-jinxie?’
Frustrated, Maddy banged the perspex tube with the palm of her hand. ‘Doesn’t mat er. I’l explain another time. The point is what are we gonna do?’
‘If we start another one o , it’l be at least another thirty-six hours before we can send someone to investigate the Chan thing,’ said Sal.
‘That’s my point!’ replied Maddy, removing her glasses and rubbing her eyes. ‘The message sounded urgent. Right?
God knows what damage is happening to the timeline ahead of us right now!’
‘We don’t have much choice,’ replied Sal. ‘Unless …’
Maddy nodded. ‘Unless you go check it out on your own, Liam.’
Liam looked at them both. ‘You’re joking, right?’
Neither said anything.
‘Right,’ he replied. ‘Wel , the answer is … not on your nel y! No way! No sir! I’m not going into some spangly future place without a Bob –’ he looked again at the female form inside the tube – ‘or a Roberta by my side. It’s been hard enough for me trying to get my head around 2001 and al your crazy modern ways. There’s no way that I’m doing 2015 al on my own, I’m tel in’ you.’
Maddy sighed. ‘Al right, then.’ She looked at the shape oating in the goo. ‘That thing may not have the brute strength of the last one, but at least you’d have Bob’s AI strength of the last one, but at least you’d have Bob’s AI and database along with you.’ Maddy turned to him. ‘And this is just a scouting mission anyway. Just a quick visit to see what happened to Chan.’
Liam’s face hardened. ‘That’s what Foster said to me the last time … and look what happened. I got stuck in the middle of an invasion for six months.’
Maddy reached a hand out and touched his arm. ‘Wel , this time we’l just be more cautious.’
He chewed his lip in thought for a moment, then nal y nodded. ‘Jeez … al right. I suppose if it’s just a quick look-see.’
Maddy gently slapped his shoulder. ‘Good. Sal?’
‘Yes?’
‘Let’s birth it.’
‘OK.’
Sal squat ed down on her haunches to tap the command into the smal control panel at the bot om of the cylinder.
‘Er … Liam?’ said Maddy.
‘Yes?’
‘Would you mind?’
‘Mind? Mind what?’
‘A lit le privacy?’
‘Uh?’
Maddy sighed. ‘It may just be a mindless blubbering clone right now … but it’s stil a lady.’
Liam was stil sulking at being kicked out of the back room when the metal door to the hatchery nal y slid to room when the metal door to the hatchery nal y slid to one side with a shril squeak of un-oiled rol ers. Maddy and Sal emerged through the doorway rst, beaming like a pair of proud midwives. They ushered a pale shu ing form wrapped in a long towel out into the light of the main arch.
Liam studied her; she was tal er than the other two and, of course, as Bob had rst been when he’d been dumped out of the bot om of his tube, she was completely bald. Yet, despite that, he realized she was – and he felt a lit le queasy admit ing this to himself – quite beautiful.
‘Uh … hel o,’ he said awkwardly.
The clone stared at him curiously as the girls led her across the arch towards the table and armchairs. Her pale skin glistened, wet with the goo she’d been oating in only moments ago, and the smel – like a rancid meat stew –
wafted across to him, turning his stomach.
‘Hel o there,’ said Liam again as they sat her down opposite him.
‘Flug herr gu f slurb,’ the clone replied, dark brown slime dribbling out of the side of her mouth and down her chin.
‘Right,’ said Maddy to Liam. ‘You can get acquainted while I sort out uploading Bob’s AI.’
He nodded, his eyes stil locked on the clone. She seemed to have lit le of the bulging musculature of Bob …
athletic, though, not bulky like he’d been last time. Bob.
Bob? Liam, you idiot.
Bob? Liam, you idiot.
He realized that it was stupid to think of that rst apelike clone as Bob; it had merely been the organic vehicle that Bob’s AI code had rst used. But stil , he mused, Bob’s
‘personality’ – if he could actual y use that word – had been formed inside that big brute. It was almost impossible not to think of him as a big, clumsy, Panzer tank of a man, with fuzzy coconut hair and a voice as deep and rumbling as one of the trains that regularly rat led over the Wil iamsburg Bridge above them.
During the six months he’d been stuck in the past with him he’d grown at ached to the big lumbering ape; not just the code in his head, but that expressionless vapid face of his, those horribly awkward smiles – more like a horse baring its teeth. He’d even cried when those men had gunned Bob down, riddling him with enough bul ets to ensure that even his robust body had no hope of recovery. Cried as Bob had ‘died’ in his arms and he’d had to perform an act of surgery that since then he’d done his very best to blank from his memory.
Cried for Bob, although he’d never admit that to the others because it seemed sil y. Al that made Bob Bob had survived, had come back from the past in his bloodcovered hand: a wafer of silicon containing his AI, every memory he had, al the learning, al the adapting, al the growing up he’d done in those six months in the past. That was Bob, not the tat ered bul et-riddled corpse he’d left behind in the blood-spat ered snow of 1941.
Liam looked again at the young … woman … in front Liam looked again at the young … woman … in front of him: lean and athletic, a porcelain beauty to her face. Her? HER? It’s an IT, Liam. IT … get it? Not a ‘her’. Just an organic vehicle. A meat robot.
Almost as if the clone could read his mind, it drooled another long spit le string of gunk out of the side of its mouth and grunted something unintel igible.
Sal giggled. ‘So like Bob, isn’t she? She could be his twin sister.’
Maddy returned from the desk to sit beside the female clone. ‘OK, Bob’s preparing the download protocols. He needs to handshake with this support unit’s in-built operating system before he can upload a copy of his AI into it.’
‘Uh … how does Bob get into her … its head?’ asked Liam. ‘Don’t you need some sort of a cable or something?’
‘Bluetooth,’ she replied wearily. ‘Yes, I know, that means nothing to you.’ She sighed. ‘OK. It’s a broadband wireless data communication protocol designed for lowlatency short-distance transmission.’ Liam was stil staring at her, slack-jawed and bemused. Maddy sighed again.
‘Information wil y through the air from the computer and into its head.’
‘Oh … right.’ Liam smiled. ‘Why didn’t you just say that in the rst place?’
They heard a beep coming from the computer desk.
‘Uploading is starting now,’ said Maddy.
The clone sit ing opposite Liam suddenly jerked upright and cocked her head like a dog hearing a dog-whistle. and cocked her head like a dog hearing a dog-whistle. He watched with fascination as the support unit’s eyes blinked rapidly with the data ooding into the tiny computer system built into the middle of its cranium –
computer technology that came from the 2050s, technology immensely more powerful than their array of linked PCs beneath the computer desk.
The download of information took about ten minutes, then nal y the female clone closed her eyes.
‘Instal ing,’ explained Maddy. ‘Then it wil boot up again.’
After a few moments the clone looked up at them with eyes that now seemed to faintly glint with intel igence.
‘Bob?’ said Maddy, ‘you OK?’
The clone nodded awkwardly. ‘A rmative.’ The voice was a deep growl, almost as deep as Bob’s old voice had been.
‘Jay-zus!’ Liam lurched. ‘That’s … weird.’
Sal pul ed a face. ‘Ewww … jahul a! That’s just so-o-o wrong!’
‘I wil adjust the vocal register,’ Bob’s barrel-deep voice rumbled. The support unit cocked its head then spoke again. ‘Is this bet er?’ The voice now the smooth upperregister of a teenage girl’s. Maddy nodded. ‘Much bet er. I think we can safely say you’re not an it … you’re a she now.’
Liam shook his head as he studied it … him … her …
Bob. ‘I feel very strange about this,’ he nal y mut ered.
‘Very strange indeed.’
CHAPTER 14
2001, New York
‘Now, she’s had al the biographical information about Edward Chan and details of the layout of the Texas Advanced Energy Research Institute uploaded. Isn’t that right?’
The support unit nodded as she lowered herself into the water beside Liam, wearing underwear that Maddy had self-consciously pul ed out from beneath the sheets of her bunk and donated.
‘A rmative. I have al the data required for this mission,’ the support unit replied sweetly.
Liam shook his head. ‘This is so weird. I mean … it’s great to have you back an’ al , Bob, but you’re a … you’re a …’ His glance ickered involuntarily for a moment towards the clone’s chest. He clasped his eyes shut. ‘Oh Jeez … you’re a girl, so you are!’
‘Recommendation: suggest this copy of my AI be given an appropriate unique identi er.’
Maddy, sit ing on the top step and looking down at them in the water, nodded. ‘That’s right. You can’t go round cal ing her Bob.’
‘Additional information: although the AI in my computer is a direct duplication, I am now interfaced with computer is a direct duplication, I am now interfaced with a di erent organic brain, and during the operational lifespan of this organic support frame, di erent data wil result in a di erent emergent AI.’
Liam looked up at Maddy. ‘What did she … it … Bob just say?’
‘That you should think of this support unit as someone brand new. As a di erent team member … because she’s going to develop a di erent personality. That’s right, isn’t it?’The support unit nodded. ‘A rmative. Consequently this AI should have its own identifying label.’
‘She needs a new name to avoid confusion with Bob,’
added Maddy, nodding towards the bank of monitors and computers on the desk. ‘Remember, Bob’s stil in there.’
She grinned. ‘You’re best thinking of this support unit as
… I dunno … his sister.’
Liam looked at the clone treading water beside him. She tried one of Bob’s reassuring horse smiles – just as clumsy and il - t ing as her … brother. But, somehow, more appealing on her slim face.
‘Liam,’ she said softly, ‘please give me a name.’
‘Go on,’ said Maddy. ‘It’s your turn.’
He shook his head. ‘I … don’t know.’
‘OK, you think about it.’ She cal ed across the archway to Sal. ‘What’s the countdown?’
‘Fifty seconds!’
She handed them a couple of sealed plastic bags.
‘Clothes for you in there. And a wig for her. Now, you’l
‘Clothes for you in there. And a wig for her. Now, you’l arrive at the institute just as a class of thirty children are being given a tour of the place. I’ve checked the oor plans and picked out what looks like an equipment storage room near to the institute’s main experimental chamber. That’s where we’l send you. You can dry o and change in there, then join the school party.’
Liam nodded.
‘You’l be there to observe how Edward Chan is assassinated, OK? Not to stop it … just watch. Then we’l bring you back, you can tel us what happened, then we can work on what we need to do to prevent it happening. That’s the plan. Got it?’
‘Aye. And the return window?’
‘Is set for ten minutes after Edward Chan’s time of death. The usual failed-return protocols apply – if you miss that rst window, we’l open again an hour later …
you know how it goes.’
‘An hour later, a day later, a week later.’
‘That’s it.’
‘Thirty seconds!’ cal ed out Sal.
‘You OK, Liam?’ said Maddy softly.
He nodded, his teeth beginning to chat er with the cold.
‘Come back safely,’ she said a ectionately, pat ing his hand holding the side of the tube. She got to her feet and clanked down the steps beside the tube.
‘Ten seconds!’
Liam turned to look at the support unit treading water beside him. ‘Hey … I’ve got a name for you.’
beside him. ‘Hey … I’ve got a name for you.’
‘Insu cient time, Liam,’ she replied. ‘We have to go under the water now.’
Reluctantly he nodded, sucked in a big lungful of air, let go of the side and held his nose. The support unit gently rested a hand on top of his head and shoved him under with surprising force, then ducked beneath the water herself.
CHAPTER 15
2015, Texas
He watched Edward Chan walking ahead of him with the other kids. He looked so smal among the other highschool-age kids, so smal and so vulnerable with his highschool rucksack on his back and a yel ow T-shirt two sizes too big for him.
Yes. Yes, he does … but don’t forget who this boy is. Just how dangerous he is.
Howard Goodal grit ed his teeth with renewed determination. Ahead of him, just a dozen yards away, was the legendary Edward Chan, grandfather of time-travel technology. His mind reiterated an inescapable mantra. The boy has to die. The boy has to die.
Too many of his col eagues had been arrested to get him to this place, this time, close enough to kil Chan. He could feel the weight in his own rucksack – a red one with High School Musical 4 stencil ed in cheerful pink across it. He could feel the weight of responsibility in there and the miniature carbon-bre projectile weapon hidden inside an innocent-looking camping ask, the cheap plastic kind you can pick up from Wal-Mart for ve dol ars.
The institute’s guide eased his way through the shu ing trail of students to the front where he stopped, turned trail of students to the front where he stopped, turned round and raised his hands to get everyone’s at ention.
‘OK, now that you guys have al had some refreshments and you’ve had a lit le introduction to the theory behind zero-point energy, we’re going to be heading into the business part of this facility: the experimental reactor building. Before we go inside there’s one more security check –’
Thirty students moaned in unison.
‘Sorry, kids,’ he laughed. ‘I’m afraid it’s procedure, so if you’d al just open your rucksacks and school bags one last time for our security guards to get a quick look-see inside, then we can proceed.’
Third time. Howard did his best to look just as casual and irritated at the hassle as al the other kids. He unzipped his rucksack and held it open for a cursory glance. If the guard bothered to unscrew the drinking cap of the camping ask, he’d nd the smal weapon, which was roughly the size and shape of a whiteboard marker. Howard watched the guard work his way down the line of impatient children.
But he won’t unscrew it … because, Howard, you’re going to look just as bored as al these other kids. Bored and impatient to get on with the tour. And not nervous. Not scared.
Howard was the one in their group they’d selected to do the job. Although he was twenty-three he looked young, young enough to pass as a high-school student, a few tufts of downy hair on his upper lip suggested a boy desperate of downy hair on his upper lip suggested a boy desperate to grow his rst moustache. His dark wavy hair pul ed back into a scru y ponytail, his thrash-metal Arch-NME On Tour T-shirt, took six or seven years o him. Now, he no longer looked like Howard Goodal , a mathematics graduate from the year 2059, but Leonard Baumgardner –
some grungy high-school kid who’d managed to earn a set of top scores in his SATs.
The real Lenny was back home in his basement, bound and gagged along with his mom. Howard had brie y considered kil ing them both, worried they might struggle free and raise the alarm. But he gured this was al going to be done before that could happen.
He looked close enough in appearance to the spot y face on Lenny’s old school ID card to pass a cursory examination, and since this party of students had assembled together in Austin earlier this morning, and he was the only kid from Baumgardner’s school going, there was no one there to not recognize him. No one had any reason to believe he wasn’t young Leonard.
Of course, none of the kids knew each other; they were from di erent schools al over the state – thirty kids assembling, early morning, with their parents, waiting to be signed on to the coach and into the care of Mr Whitmore for the day.
Howard glanced around at the others.
And what if one of the others is not who he says he is?
He kicked that thought away as quickly as it had arrived. He needed to stay very calm. Needed to look arrived. He needed to stay very calm. Needed to look relaxed, like these others; slightly bored, waiting to be shown something interesting, something worth crawling out of bed for so early.
The guard nal y reached for Howard’s bag. ‘Morning,’
he grunted. ‘Let’s take a look, son.’
Howard casual y held out his rucksack.
‘Anything hazardous in here, son?’
‘What? You mean … apart from my big bomb?’ sighed Howard with a lazy smile.
The guard scowled at him. ‘Not even funny, kid.’ His hand rummaged quickly through the grubby items inside: a sandwich box, the ask, several rol ed-up and dog-eared comicbooks, before he slapped the rucksack closed and waved Howard past.
Howard o ered the guard a casual wave. ‘Have a nice day, now.’
‘Go on, kid … scoot,’ said the guard, before turning to rummage through another bag.
Ahead he could see Chan and the other students gathered around the guide, Mr Kel y, and the teacher, Mr Whitmore, waiting for the last of them to be checked. He sucked in a deep breath as he wandered over to join them, set ling his nerves, his pounding heart. Inside the zero-point chamber, that’s when he was going to do it. The chamber would be sealed, and this security guard and the others on the outside; his best chance to re several aimed shots at the boy. It would take them a while to react, to open the door.
open the door.
To take me down.
Howard smiled grimly. Not such a big price to pay to save the future of mankind, not real y.
CHAPTER 16
2015, Texas
They landed with a wet splash on to a hard tiled oor.
‘Ouch!’ Liam whimpered.
The water sloshed noisily across the oor soaking cardboard boxes of domestic cleaning materials.
‘Jay-zus, why can’t we ever land on something soft …
like a pil ow?’ He grimaced as he let go of his nose and pu ed out the breath he’d taken back in 2001.
‘Insu cient data to identify a soft landing loca–’
Liam raised a hand. ‘It’s al right … I wasn’t after an answer.’ He pul ed a wet shock of dark hair out of his eyes and opened them, instantly wishing he hadn’t.
‘Oh-Mother-of-God!’ He clamped his eyes shut and turned away to look at the storeroom wal .
‘What is wrong?’
‘You could have warned me you were taking those wet things o !’
‘Why?’
‘Because … because …’ He bit his lip. This is so very not right.
‘Because you’re a, ah … you’re a girl now, Bob.’
Liam spot ed some towels on the storeroom shelf and began to dry himself o .
began to dry himself o .
‘You should assign a new ident. to this AI copy. I may be “Bob” now,’ she said, ‘but this AI wil develop new subroutines and characteristics that require a new identifying label.’
Liam nodded. ‘Yes.’ Self-consciously he found himself wrapping the towel round his waist as he hurriedly removed his wet boxers and pul ed the clothes he’d brought with him out of the bag.
‘Four seconds before we were transmit ed, you indicated you had a suitable ident. for me.’
‘Oh yes … so I did.’
She turned to look at him. ‘So, what wil I be cal ed?’
Liam could hear the rustle of clothes being quickly pul ed on behind his back.
Good.
He real y didn’t need to see that … again. He found a pair of neon green three-quarter-length baggy shorts and a navy blue sweatshirt with the word NIKE splayed across it. And, for some reason, a large tick beneath the word. He felt much bet er with some clothes on, even if they looked quite ridiculous.
‘I had a cousin cal ed Rebecca,’ he said. ‘Used to cal her Becks for short.’
‘Becks?’ replied the support unit, her voice rising at the end in a query.
‘That’s right – Becks.’
‘A moment … logging ident….’
‘So, are you decent now? Can I turn round?’
‘So, are you decent now? Can I turn round?’
‘Decent?’
‘You know, got clothes on?’
‘A rmative.’
Liam turned round and found his breath caught momentarily. ‘Blimey!’
Becks cocked her head and looked at him. ‘Are these garments incorrectly deployed?’
His eyes skit ered awkwardly up from the combat boots to the black leggings, to the black lace mini-skirt to a black crop top that displayed a bare midri , up to her … perfect
… face framed by tumbling locks of aming fox-red hair. Quite clearly Sal had decided their support unit needed to look like some sort of gothic valkyrie.
‘Uh. No, you are … you got it about … errrr … right, I suppose … I think.’
Liam felt his mouth go dry and a strange jit ery, lurching sensation in his stomach.
Jay-zus … get a grip, Liam. That’s … that’s … that’s just Bob wearing a girl suit. Al right?
‘Recommendation: you should refer to me as Becks from this point on,’ she said rmly. ‘It wil avoid unnecessary confusion between AI versions.’
He nodded. ‘Al right … uh, OK. So, you’re Becks, then. That’s that set led.’
‘Correct.’ Her smile was faltering and clumsy as always, just like Bob. But on those lips, strangely quite perfect. Liam decided to shift his mind to other things. ‘I suppose we had bet er get a move on and nd this Chan suppose we had bet er get a move on and nd this Chan fel a.’
Becks nodded and blinked, retrieving data from her hard drive. ‘We are located within the institute’s experimental reactor building. The reactor is very close to this location.’
Liam stepped towards the storeroom’s door and cracked it open a sliver. Outside he could see a narrow hal way and, opposite, double doors with a sign on them: AUTHORIZED VISITORS AND STAFF ONLY. Just then he heard mu ed voices from the end of the hal way and glass doors swung inwards to reveal a man in a smart linen suit leading a shu ing gaggle of teenagers.
‘Yes, we’re in the correct place al right,’ whispered Liam. He watched them coming towards them, the man turning to talk to the group, gesturing emphatical y with his hands. Liam gently closed the door until it clicked.
‘They’re just coming up now. We can tag along on the end,’ he whispered.
He waited until the muted sound of the man’s droning voice and the shu e and slap of trainers on the polished linoleum oor passed them by before he cracked the door open again and peeked out. The last kids in the school party were just ahead, three blonde-haired girls deeply involved in a mumbled conversation, clearly too interested in chat ing to each other to even pretend to be listening to the guide up front.
‘Now!’ Liam mouthed, and stepped out behind them, Becks swiftly fol owing.
Becks swiftly fol owing.
He fel in step at the back of the group and when one of the girls casual y glanced back over her shoulder he quickly managed to mimic the laid-back swagger of one of the boys up ahead.
‘Oh,’ said the girl. ‘Thought we were, like, you know, the last.’
Liam shrugged and smiled. ‘Guess, like, not,’ he replied, doing his best to bury the Irish in his voice. Her gaze lingered a moment longer, a ickering smile for him. Then she turned back round and was back to gossiping in a conspiratorial murmur with the other two again.
Liam pu ed out a silent gasp of relief. It looked like they’d jumped the rst hurdle – successful y sneaking on to the back of the tour party and managing to pass themselves o as yet two more kids who might actual y have preferred a trip to Disneyland or Universal Studios than wandering around a bunch of clinical y clean corridors. He grinned at Becks and then almost immediately wished he hadn’t. The smile she returned gave him that weird ip-opping sensation in his stomach again.
Liam, you daft idiot … It’s just Bob in a dress, for crying out loud!
He wished Sal could have found some other clothes for the support unit, something baggy, drab and un at ering. And why a wig with hair like that? Why that colour? He’d always loved that copper red. His rst crush at school, always loved that copper red. His rst crush at school, Mary O’Donnel , she’d had hair that bewitching colour of ery red.
Oh, saints preserve me … she’s just a meat robot, so she is.
CHAPTER 17
2015, Texas
‘And here we are!’ announced Mr Kel y to the group.
‘We’re about to enter the central reactor containment area. The whole experimental chamber is surrounded by an electro-magnetic eld to lter out possible interference from al manner of electronic devices. Basical y, we’re going to be walking inside a giant electro-magnet. So if you kids have any iPods, laptops, iPhones or memory cards with data on you’d rather not lose, may I suggest you place them on the table here before we step through?’ he said, indicating a table beside a pair of thick metal doors. Liam watched with amusement as virtual y every student sighed and then proceeded to reach into their rucksacks to pul out al manner of shiny metal and plastic gadgets and gizmos.
Eventual y done, Mr Kel y tapped an entry code on to the large metal doors and he smiled expectantly as they swung slowly inwards.
At last, the gaggle of teenagers in his charge seemed to be shaken out of their torpid state of disinterest. A shared gasp rippled among them as their eyes swept up to take in the large spherical chamber, seemingly constructed entirely out of footbal -sized bal -bearings.
out of footbal -sized bal -bearings.
‘As you can see, the entire chamber is lined with charged magnets, which act as a completely impenetrable barrier for any sort of FM radio signals, WiFi signals, electrical currents, atmospheric static and so on, the sort of things that can a ect our readings from the test runs.’
He led them into the spherical chamber along a raised walkway, towards a platform thirty feet in diameter. Mr Kel y pointed towards a rather less impressive-looking structure, what appeared to be a polished metal witch’s cauldron with a lid on, six feet across. Wires and cables and broad cylinders of metal descended through the lid into whatever witches’ brew was bubbling away inside.
‘Now that, kids … that’s what this is al about. That metal sphere contains tens of bil ions of dol ars’ worth of investment, and quite possibly represents mankind’s energy future.’
‘That’s the reactor?’ asked Mr Whitmore.
‘Yup. That’s it, the zero-point energy test reactor.’ Kel y smiled and shook his head. ‘You know, it stil amazes me that something so smal , something the size of a … of a smal car could, in theory, provide more than enough energy for every last person on this planet.’
Liam found his jaw sagging open, just like everyone else’s.
‘The tests we’ve run in there have so far produced real y quite staggering amounts of energy out of the space-time vacuum pinholes that we’ve opened. The trick is sustaining and control ing the pinhole … and, of course, containing and control ing the pinhole … and, of course, containing such huge amounts of energy.’
‘That sounds a lit le, like … a lit le dangerous,’ said the blonde girl who’d glanced back at Liam.
Mr Kel y looked at her. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Laura Whitely.’
‘Wel , Laura … I guess it does sound a lit le dangerous. Dr Brohm, one of our leading scientists working on this, likened it to opening a very smal peephole and looking on to the face of God himself.’ Mr Kel y forced a laugh at that comment. ‘A lit le fanciful, I think, but it gives you an idea of how much energy we’re talking about …’
Howard Goodal felt the rst bead of sweat trickle down the smal of his back as he discreetly eased his rucksack o his shoulder on to the oor. He slowly opened the zip just a lit le and sneaked his hand inside. His ngers quickly found the screw cap of his thermos ask and he gently began twisting it o .
He could see Edward Chan at the front of the smal knot of students gazing in silent awe at the glistening metal container.
Howard wondered how they could al be so incredibly stupid, how mankind was happy to play dice with technology it had no way of understanding. He remembered a lecture at university. His tutor had talked about the Americans’ Manhat an project during the Second World War – their at empt to build the world’s rst atom bomb. How, when they rst did a test detonation in the deserts of New Mexico, the scientists hadn’t been certain deserts of New Mexico, the scientists hadn’t been certain whether the bomb would destroy several square miles of desert or, indeed, the entire planet. But stil the reckless, sil y fools went ahead and tested it anyway, played dice with mankind’s future.
Just like time travel – a technology mankind was woeful y unprepared to be in possession of. He stepped forward, a lit le closer to Chan, his eyes darting to the heavy doorway of the chamber slowly being swung back into place.
His hand felt the tube-shaped carbon-bre weapon. It was smal , tiny, with a magazine containing six toxintipped projectiles. He only had to wound Chan, just get one shot on target and wound the boy – the neurotoxin would nish him in minutes.
This is it, Howard, he told himself. This is the end of time travel.
CHAPTER 18
2001, New York
‘What? Jealous?’ Maddy shook her head emphatical y.
‘Jealous of Bob Version Two?’
Sal had a mischievous look on her face. ‘Just asking.’
‘Oh, come on, of course not! It’s not even human … it’s just … it’s just a clone. It’s not even a genuine copy of a human – it doesn’t have a proper human brain!’
‘But she looks very human.’
‘And so does a storefront mannequin, or a GI Joe action gure or a Barbie dol .’
Sal shrugged and grinned mischievously. ‘Liam seemed impressed.’
Maddy had noticed. His eyes had been out on stalks. ‘No di erent to any other boy, I guess … one thing on their minds al the time.’
Sal giggled. ‘True.’ She spun in the o ce chair beside the computer desk. ‘So, you don’t … so you’re not jealous?
’ Maddy took o her glasses and wiped them on her Tshirt. It was decidedly odd having Bob looking like that, like some athletic-t catwalk model, some Amazonian beauty. And yes … having something like that gliding beautiful y around was enough to make any female feel beautiful y around was enough to make any female feel inadequate, plain in comparison. But then Maddy was used to it.
On the other hand, if Sal was asking in a roundabout way whether she had feelings for Liam … wel , the answer was no, not those sort of feelings. Liam was nice-looking, charming in an old-fashioned gentlemanly way, but what she felt for him, more than anything else, was pity, a choking sadness.
Every time I send him through … I’m kil ing him just a lit le bit more.
She looked at Sal. ‘No, I’m not jealous. I’m not, you know, like … after him –’
> Maddy, it is time to activate the return window.
‘OK,’ she replied, turning to face the desk. She began to tap the retrieval coordinates into the computer.
‘But he’s nice,’ said Sal.
‘Sure he’s nice,’ said Maddy. ‘I’m sure he had girlfriends back in Ireland, but … but, I’m a couple of years older than him anyway and … and it’s more like he’s a lit le brother, or a nephew real y, than, you know … sort of boyfriend material.’
Maddy double-checked the coordinates. ‘Anyway … My God, Sal –’ she grimaced at her – ‘I can’t believe you’re being so personal!’
‘Sorry,’ said Sal, icking a tress of dark hair out of her eye. ‘Oh … I just remembered! You’l never guess what I saw in a junk store down–’
‘Just a moment, Sal. I need to concentrate …’
CHAPTER 19
2015, Texas
Liam identi ed Chan among the students. It wasn’t as obvious as he’d thought it would be. There were about seven or eight who looked oriental to him, and most of them were younger than the other students. But he knew Edward Chan was the youngest here and he zeroed in on a smal boy at the front, gaping wide-eyed at the zero-point energy reactor. Seemingly entranced by it.
Becks gently tapped Liam’s arm and leaned towards him. ‘Information: according to the mission data, Edward Chan only has four minutes and seven seconds left to live.’
Liam nodded. He looked around the chamber, trying to identify what or who could possibly pose a threat to the boy. If they were down to four minutes, then presumably the lad’s kil er was right here, right now, get ing ready to make his move. His eyes darted from Mr Kel y, explaining the machinery and instrumentation, to Mr Whitmore, stroking his sparsely bearded chin thoughtful y, to the two technicians manning a couple of data terminals. One of them?
His gaze shifted to the students, al of them stil marvel ing at the interior of the chamber and some of the incredible-sounding statistics that Mr Kel y was reeling o . incredible-sounding statistics that Mr Kel y was reeling o .
‘… equivalent to al of the energy produced by coal, oil, natural gas … over the last one hundred and fty years …’
One of them? One of the students?
Why not? It could just as easily be one of the students. After al , Liam was the same age as the oldest of them and an assassin would probably have a bet er chance smuggling himself in as a student than he would a member of sta . After al , that had worked for him and Becks. His gaze wandered from face to face, looking for a nervous tic, darting eyes, lips moving in silent prayer, someone clearly agonizing over the precise moment to strike. Becks gently tapped his arm again.
‘What now?’ he hissed.
‘I am sensing precursor tachyon particles in the vicinity.’
He looked at her. ‘Uh?’ Their return window wasn’t due yet, not until ten minutes after Chan’s supposed moment of death. That was the arrangement. ‘Are you sure?’
Becks nodded towards the reactor. ‘There. They are appearing …’ Her eyes widened, and her lids ut ered and blinked rapidly. ‘DANGER!’ she suddenly barked at the top of her voice.
Howard was almost beside Chan, his nger on the trigger inside his bag ready to pul the smal weapon out and re it at his back. He wanted to be right beside Chan, right next to him, to know as an absolute certainty he wasn’t going to miss. Too much rested on this. Everything rested on this. He was just a couple of yards from him when a on this. He was just a couple of yards from him when a tal girl with distinctive red hair at the back of the knot of students suddenly started shouting.
Mr Kel y stopped mid-sentence. ‘Excuse me?’
‘DANGER!’ shouted the girl again, her voice loud and urgent.
‘Excuse me, young lady,’ replied Mr Whitmore, ‘this is not the place for some sort of stupid prank!’
Howard turned to look at the girl.
Something’s wrong. Someone knows!
‘DANGER!’ shouted the girl again, but her nger pointed directly at the reactor, not him. ‘Tachyon interference with the reactor! The reactor wil explode!’
Howard had no idea what the hel she was on about. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, perhaps she was just some aky goth girl making some sort of a protest against experimenting with zero-point energy. He was with her on that, but now was not the best time. He wasn’t going to be distracted. He pushed his way forward towards Chan as the other students began to step back warily from the reactor in response to her outburst.
At last, standing beside the smal boy, he looked down at him, his nger poised on the trigger, ready to whip the gun out and re.
Chan turned to look up at him. ‘What’s the girl at the back saying?’
Howard found himself shrugging. ‘I … uh … I guess she’s having some kinda t.’
‘Now stop it!’ snapped Mr Whitmore, pushing his way
‘Now stop it!’ snapped Mr Whitmore, pushing his way through the bemused students towards the girl. ‘Nothing is going to explode!’
Chan grinned up at Howard. ‘Crazy girl, huh?’
And Howard found himself smiling back at the kid, somehow not quite ready … not quite ready to pul out the gun and re at point blank range. He real y hadn’t expected to be looking down into a friendly face at the very moment he pul ed the trigger on Chan.
∗
Without a warning Becks grabbed Liam roughly by the shoulders and man-handled him back from the reactor towards the walkway leading to the sealed exit.
‘Becks! What the hel are you doing? What’s going on?’
‘Imminent threat of explosion,’ she said crisply and calmly, and a lit le too loudly. Her voice spooked the other students nearby who quickly began to join them backing away from it.
‘Everybody, calm down!’ shouted Mr Kel y. ‘Nothing is going to happen!’
Liam looked up at Becks. ‘Are you sure it’s going to –?’
Becks suddenly stopped dragging him. ‘Too late to escape!’ She yanked Liam’s arm downwards to the oor and he dropped to his knees.
‘Ouch! What are you doing?’
She knelt down in front of him and wrapped her arms round his shoulders, shielding him from the reactor. Liam peeked over her shoulder and saw the reactor’s thick metal casing suddenly start to ripple like jel y and a moment casing suddenly start to ripple like jel y and a moment later begin to col apse in on itself.
‘What the –?’
Becks reached out one hand and grabbed his nose painful y. ‘You must lower your head,’ she ordered, yanking him roughly down until he was almost doubled over, his head in her lap. Then al of a sudden he felt the oddest tugging sensation. As if he and Becks and the world around them was being sucked into a gigantic laundry mangler, stretched impossibly thin like elastic strands of spaghet i towards the reactor … fol owing the col apsed metal casing into some inconceivable pinpoint of in nity.
‘Ooooooohhhhh Jaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy-zzzzzzussssssss!’
CHAPTER 20
2001, New York
Maddy and Sal stared at the shimmering window in the middle of the archway. Through a curtain of undulating, rippling air they could see the dim outlines of the storeroom they’d sent Liam and the support unit to.
‘Something’s de nitely wrong,’ whispered Sal. Maddy nodded. ‘That’s the third back-up window they’ve missed.’
Five minutes ago they’d been cheerful y prepping the scheduled return window, assuming that the simple scouting mission had been a success and Liam and the support unit would be ready and waiting to come back and tel them what exactly had happened to Chan. Now, for the third time, both girls were staring at a dark storeroom with no sign of either of them.
‘Oh boy,’ ut ered Maddy. ‘I don’t know what we do now. That’s it – we’ve tried al the back-up windows.’
> Maddy?
She stepped towards the desk and leaned over the deck mic. ‘Yes?’
> You should try the six-month window.
‘Yes … yes, you’re right.’
Bob was right, it was worth a try. She clicked the PURGE
Bob was right, it was worth a try. She clicked the PURGE
but on on the screen and the shimmering window in the middle of the archway vanished with a soft pop and a gentle pu of displaced air. She entered a new set of time coordinates: exactly ve months, thirty days, twenty-three hours and fty-ve minutes after the time they’d been sent into the future; exactly ve minutes before the support unit’s mission time span was up and it was scheduled to self-destruct. It made sense. It would be the last possible chance to rendezvous with a return window. With the support unit dead, Liam would not be able to receive a tachyon signal to instruct him on a new rendezvous timestamp. If they weren’t there, in that storeroom six months after arriving and impatient to get back home, then Maddy had no idea what she could do next.
She clicked on the screen to con rm the new time coordinates and then activated the displacement machinery. Once again a twelve-foot-wide sphere of air began to shift and undulate, revealing the storeroom again. Both girls squinted for a while at the dark space beyond. Same store cupboard … a few things had been shifted around; clearly someone had had a spring-clean in there. But no sign of either Liam or the support unit.
‘Oh,’ said Sal. ‘We’ve real y lost them.’
Maddy pinched her chin. ‘No … let me think.’ There was a way to communicate with the support unit. A tachyon signal beam. That’s what they’d done last time: aimed a broad beam of particles in the direction in which they’d guessed Liam and Bob were and transmit ed an they’d guessed Liam and Bob were and transmit ed an encoded signal back through history. It had worked. Bob had picked it up.
‘Bob,’ she spoke into the mic, ‘can we send a tachyon signal beam forward?’
> A rmative. We have enough power.
‘Right … what if we send it to, say … ve minutes before whatever happened to Chan, happened.’
‘What message?’ asked Sal.
‘I dunno. Something like – abort the mission, something is going to go wrong.’
Sal nodded. ‘Yes, we should do that.’
Maddy sat down in one of the o ce chairs and purged the open window. It pu ed out of existence. She then opened the message interface and quickly tapped in a message.
Return to the store cupboard immediately. We’l pick you up there. Something is about to go wrong with your mission. Something is about to happen to you. A return window wil be waiting for you.
Bob’s dialogue box popped up.
> You wish to send this message?
‘Yes, immediately.’
> Recommendation: a narrow beam transmission. A narrow beam meant she needed to know quite precisely where to aim it. But she had no idea where the two of them might be. They might have been somewhere else in the facility. Something may have caused a detour, a re alarm perhaps? Or some malfunction in the lab may re alarm perhaps? Or some malfunction in the lab may have resulted in everyone being evacuated.
‘Bob, let’s make the beam broad enough to sweep the whole area. Make sure the support unit gets the message.’
> Caution: there wil be technology in the vicinity that may be unpredictably a ected by tachyon particles.
‘I real y don’t care if we mess up somebody’s experiments, or damage their precious gizmos … I want Liam to get that damned message!’ she snapped angrily.
‘Al right?’
> A rmative. Wide beam sweep to cover vicinity. Sal looked at her. ‘Are you sure about this?’ She nodded towards the computers. ‘Bob just sort of cautioned us, didn’t he?’
Maddy spun the chair to face her. ‘You got any other suggestions?’
Sal shook her head.
‘Right, then,’ she replied, her voice brit le. ‘We have to make contact.’
Stay calm, Maddy. You’re the leader, so stay calm. Her face softened as she reached for her inhaler on the desk. ‘Sorry, Sal … I’m just a bit stressed and –’
‘No, it’s OK.’
‘I don’t know what else to do.’
> Con rm transmission?
‘Bob, you cautioned me … because what? Is there some sort of danger to Liam if we throw a whole load of tachyon beams forward?’
> Information: tachyon particles might interfere with
> Information: tachyon particles might interfere with zero-point energy experiments that are being conducted at the institute at this time.
‘But does that endanger Liam in some way?’
> Unknown. Records show zero-point energy research was abandoned as being potential y hazardous. There is very lit le public domain data on the Texas Advanced Energy Research Institute’s work in this eld.
‘So? What do I do?’
> Recommendation: do nothing.
‘Nothing?’
> Correct. Wait for possible contact from them. Sending a tachyon signal forward may endanger Liam and the support unit and might also present a security risk for the agency.
Maddy stared at the screen in silence. ‘You want me to do absolutely nothing? When they might be in trouble and need our help? You’re asking me to do nothing but sit on my hands?’
> A rmative. A tachyon signal might be detected by sensitive instrumentation at the institute and the message intercepted. This would clearly alert them to the existence of time travel and the agency.
‘They could know time travel is possible fourteen years before Edward Chan does his maths paper,’ added Sal.
‘Our message to Liam might alter history just as much as someone kil ing Chan.’
> Sal is correct.
‘So you’re saying we wait for them to get themselves out
‘So you’re saying we wait for them to get themselves out of whatever’s happened?’
> That is my recommendation. They are very capable. Maddy chewed her lip in thought for a moment. ‘And this is my cal ?’
> You are team leader. I can only o er data and tactical advice.
‘Right, wel then I say forget potential contamination, forget any of their zero-point experiments we might be messing up and stu any security risks for the agency. They’ve pret y much left us al alone to fend for ourselves so far … I’m damned if I’m going to sacri ce Liam just to keep them happy. We warn Liam and the support unit to abort the scouting trip. We get them back home and then
… then … we can deal with any time changes we may have caused! Al right?’
Sal nodded. ‘I suppose it’s a plan.’
Maddy turned to the computer screen. ‘Al right?’
The ‘>’ cursor blinked thoughtful y on and o in the dialogue box and they heard the computer’s hard drives whirring softly. Final y, after a few moments the cursor ickered forward.
> A rmative.
‘Cool,’ said Maddy. ‘So, Bob, send that message to ve minutes before Chan’s recorded time of death.’
> A rmative.
As Bob proceeded with beaming the message, Maddy prepared to open a window yet again in the storeroom for the same moment in time and resolved to keep it open for the same moment in time and resolved to keep it open for at least ten minutes. That would give them enough time, she hoped, to receive the message, wherever they were in the institute, and make their way back to the storeroom. She was about to activate the time window when Bob’s dialogue box appeared centre screen.
> Information: there is an intense energy feedback loop interfering with the tachyon signal beam.
‘Meaning?’
> 87% probability that this is an explosion. Her breath caught in her throat. ‘An explosion?’
> Correct.
‘Oh my God.’ Maddy felt the blood drain from her face.
‘How big?’
> Unable to specify. It is a large signature reading. She looked at Sal. ‘Oh my God, you don’t think …?’
Sal swal owed nervously and didn’t say anything – her wide eyes said it al .
‘Bob, tel me it wasn’t us that just caused that to happen
– our tachyon signal?’
Bob’s cursor blinked silently for a few seconds.
> The tachyon signal is the most likely cause of the explosion. The precursor particles may have caused a reaction.
‘Oh God, what have I done?’
CHAPTER 21
Bril iant white, oating in a void of perfect, featureless white. To Liam it felt like hours, staring out at it, hanging motionless in the void as if he was oating in a glass of milk.
It felt like hours, but it could have been minutes, seconds even.
He’d begun to wonder if he was actual y dead and hanging around in some pre-afterlife limbo. Then he saw the faintest icker of movement in the thick milk world around him.
An angel coming for him? It looked like a cloud of slightly dimmer white and it danced around like a phantom, gliding in decreasing circles that brought it ever closer to him. It looked familiar.
I’ve seen that before.
Then he remembered. The day that Foster had pul ed him from the sinking Titanic. In the archway, as he’d woken the three of them from their slumber …
The seeker.
There were more out there, faint and far o , drawn to him as if they could smel his presence, like sharks smel ing blood. Perhaps the rst seeker had silently cal ed out to them that there was something here for them al to share.
share.
Oh Mary-Mother-of-God … they’re going to rip me to pieces!
The nearest seeker swooped stil closer to him and the faint cloud of grey began to take form. He thought he could make out the head and shoulders of the indeterminate shape, almost human-like. And a face that took eeting form.
Beautiful. Feminine.
He almost began to think he was right rst time, and that this was Heaven and those swooping forms were angels coming to escort him to the afterlife. Then that vaguely familiar feminine face stretched, elongated, revealing a row of razor fangs and the eyes turned to dark sockets that promised him nothing but death. It lunged towards him …
And then he was staring up at another face, framed with hair dangling down towards him, tickling his nose, with piercing grey eyes staring intently at him. ‘Liam O’Connor, are you al right?’
‘Becks?’
‘A rmative. Are you al right?’ she asked atly. ‘You appear undamaged by the explosion.’ He felt her strong hands running up and down his arms and legs, around his torso. ‘No apparent fractures.’
‘I’m OK, I think. Just a lit le … dizzy, so I am.’ He began to sit up and she helped him.
‘You are disorientated,’ she said.
‘You are disorientated,’ she said.
He looked up at a clear blue sky and a dazzling sun. He blinked back the sunlight – a curious vaguely violet hue to it – and shaded his eyes with a hand. ‘Jay-zus, where are we? Is this another world?’
‘Negative.’ She looked at him, then corrected herself.
‘No. We are where we were,’ she replied.
But when? The spherical chamber and laboratory buildings were gone. Instead of the institute’s watersprinkled lawns and owerbeds, there was nothing but jungle. If this was the same place, then it had to be some signi cant time in the future or the past. It certainly wasn’t 2015.
‘The tachyon interference caused an explosive reaction,’
said Becks. ‘We were pul ed through the zero-point window into what is known as chaos space.’
‘Chaos space?’
‘I am unable to de ne chaos space. I have no detailed data on it.’
‘And then what? We were dumped out into reality again?’
‘Correct.’
He saw another head suddenly appear above a large lush green fern leaf. Somebody else, dizzily sit ing up and wondering where on earth they were. It was one of the students: a black girl, her hair neatly thatched into cornrows. A gold hooped earring glinted in the sunlight.
‘What the –?’ she mut ered as her eyes slowly panned round the tal green trees and drooping vines. Final y her round the tal green trees and drooping vines. Final y her eyes rested on Liam and Becks.
‘Hel o there,’ said Liam, waving a hand and smiling goo ly.
She stared at him silently with eyes that stil seemed to be trying to work out what she was seeing.
He noticed another head appearing out of the foliage several dozen yards away. He recognized the receding scru y hair and sparsely bearded jowls of the teacher who’d been with the group of students during the tour of the institute.
Other heads appeared, al looking confused and frightened, spread out across a clearing in the jungle, a hundred yards in diameter. Liam recognized the institute’s smartly dressed tour guide, one of the technicians who’d been in the chamber and the rest of the students.
‘Wh-what happened?’ cal ed out the teacher.
The guide’s careful y groomed silver hair was dishevel ed, his smart suit rumpled and dirtied with mud.
‘I … I … don’t know … I just …’
Liam looked at Becks. ‘We’re going to have to take charge of things, aren’t we?’
She looked at him blankly. ‘The mission parameters have changed.’
Liam sighed. ‘No kidding.’
He was about to ask her if she had any idea at al of when in time they were when he heard a shril scream echo across the clearing.
‘What was that?’
‘What was that?’
It came again. Sharp, shril and terri ed. He got to his feet, as did several others, and pushed through clusters of knee-high ferns towards where the sound was coming from. Becks was instantly by his side, striding slightly ahead of him without any trepidation. Liam realized he felt reassured to have her there despite her diminutive frame. Despite lacking the intimidating bulk of Bob, he had a feeling she was a great deal more dangerous than she looked.
Final y, a yard ahead of him she stopped. Liam stepped round her and looked down.
The blonde girl he’d spoken to earlier – he remembered her name, it was Laura, wasn’t it? – was screaming, her eyes locked on to the thing that was lying in the tal grass beside her.
It took Liam a moment for him to make sense of what he was seeing on the ground, then … then he got it; understood what it was. His stomach opped and lurched and it took every ounce of wil power he had not to double over and vomit.
The teacher emerged from the tal grass to stand next to Liam. He fol owed Laura’s wide-eyed gaze and then sucked in a mouthful of air. ‘Oh my God! … That’s not … that’s not what I think it is,’ he whispered, and turned to look at Liam. ‘Is it?’
Among the tal fronds of vegetation nestled a smal twisted mass of muscle and bone. At one end Liam could see a long braid of blonde hair, mat ed with drying blood, see a long braid of blonde hair, mat ed with drying blood, and halfway along the contorted form, he spot ed a solitary pink Adidas trainer, hanging half on and half o a pale and perfectly normal-looking foot. It had to be one of the three blonde girls they’d tagged behind on the way into the chamber. He could quite understand the girl, Laura, screaming. They’d been chat ing, giggling and exchanging phone numbers only ten minutes ago.
Liam recal ed Foster saying sometimes it happened; sometimes, very rarely, the energy of a portal could turn a person inside out. Oh Jay-zus, what a mess.
Half an hour later those of the group that had survived the blast and arrived in one piece had made a rough assessment of their predicament. Dot ed around the jungle clearing, they’d made the gruesome discovery of more bodies just like the girl’s, turned inside out and almost unrecognizable as human. Sixteen of them. Of the thirtyve people who’d been in the chamber when the explosion – or, more accurately, implosion – had occurred, only sixteen of them appeared to have made it through alive.
Now, gathered together in the middle of the clearing, wel away from the forbidding edge of thick jungle, it was Whitmore who rst seemed to be stirring from a state of stunned shock. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve and narrowed his eyes as he studied Becks.
‘You!’ he said. ‘Yes, you! I remember now … you said it
‘You!’ he said. ‘Yes, you! I remember now … you said it was going to explode. Just … just before it actual y did.’
Becks’s face remained impassive. ‘That is correct.’
‘Hang on!’ he said again, his eyes suddenly narrowing with dawning realization. ‘You … you’re not one of m-my kids. You’re not –’
Liam could see where this was going. It was pointless continuing to pretend to be high-school students a moment longer.
‘What just happened, whatever’s just happened,’
blustered Whitmore, ‘you damn wel knew it was going to happen.’ His voice rose in pitch. ‘Who are you? Is this some sort of terrorist thing?’
Becks shook her head slowly, her face impassive.
‘Negative. We are not terrorists.’
Whitmore fel silent. His lips quivered with more questions he wanted to ask, but he was struggling to know what exactly to ask. Where to begin.
‘Excuse me?’
Their heads al turned towards a boy with kinky ginger hair, neatly side-parted into a succession of waves, and thick bot le-top glasses that made his eyes seem to bulge like a startled frog. He pointed to his name tag. ‘My name’s Franklyn … you can cal me that. Or just Frank wil do.’
He smiled at them uncertainly. ‘Uhh … I just wanted to say that … this is going to sound real y weird, but I guess I’l just come out and say it.’
‘What?’ snapped Whitmore.
‘Wel –’ he pointed up at the sky – ‘you see them?’
‘Wel –’ he pointed up at the sky – ‘you see them?’
Al eyes drifted towards the top of some trees twenty yards away, a long branch leaning out over the clearing with strange dangling wil ow-like green fronds drooping to the ground. In among them, a pair of dragon ies danced and zig-zagged with a buzz of wings they could hear from where they stood.
‘Those are huge,’ ut ered Kel y. ‘Good grief! … Twofoot, three-foot wingspan at a guess?’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Franklyn. ‘They’re real y big and I’m pret y sure I know what species that is.’
The others looked at him.
‘It’s a petalurid, I think … yeah, I’m sure that’s the right name.’
‘Great,’ said Laura, ‘so now we know.’
‘No, that’s not the important bit,’ said Franklyn. He looked at her. ‘They should be extinct.’
‘Wel , obviously they’re not,’ she replied.
‘Oh yes they are. We’ve only ever had fossils of insects that size.’
Whitmore stood up. ‘Oh my God! He’s right!’ He watched the two dragon ies emerge from the overhanging branch and dart out into the open, their wings buzzing noisily like airborne hairdryers. ‘Insects haven’t been that size since …’ He swal owed, looked at the others. ‘Wel …
I mean, mil ions and mil ions of years.’
‘Petalurids,’ ut ered Franklyn again. ‘Late Cretaceous. I’m pret y sure of that.’
Kel y got to his feet and stood beside Franklyn. ‘What Kel y got to his feet and stood beside Franklyn. ‘What are you saying?’
The boy wiped a fog of moisture from his glasses, blinking back the bright day from his smal eyes. ‘What I’m saying, Mr Kel y, is those things haven’t existed, alive … in, like, wel , I guess something like sixty-ve mil ion years.’
CHAPTER 22
2001, New York
‘Maddy! Where are you going?’
Maddy ignored Sal’s pleading voice as she strode across the archway, cranked up the shut er and stepped out into the backstreet.
I can’t do this … I can’t do this.
She felt the rst tears rol down her cheeks as she picked her way along the rubbish-strewn sidewalk towards South 6th Street at the top. Her rst proper mission in charge and she was already going to pieces. An impetuous decision on her part, stupid and hot-headed enough to go against Bob’s reasoned advice, and now she might just be responsible for kil ing Liam and the support unit. Not only that, but she’d probably also caused the deaths of dozens of others. And, most importantly, Edward Chan.
‘I can’t do this,’ she mut ered. ‘I’m just not ready for this.
’ She stepped out of the backstreet on to the corner and watched the busy intersection for a while: tra c turning right to pick up the bridge road, left towards the river; pedestrians making their way over to their jobs in Manhat an … al of them oblivious to the commercial jets already in the air and heading towards their doom. already in the air and heading towards their doom. She wanted Foster back. Needed him back. What possessed him to think for one moment she was actual y ready to run a eld o ce? His pre-recorded ‘how to’
answers stored on the computer just weren’t enough. She needed him to talk to, to explain the technology to her more ful y, to tel her more about the agency and their place in it. There were so many gaps in her knowledge she didn’t even know enough to have an idea what questions to ask. She was oundering.
‘Damn you, Foster!’ she hissed under her breath, and wiped at her wet cheeks.
The old man could be anywhere in New York, if, indeed, he’d decided to stay on in the city. He’d walked out on her on one of the Monday mornings, walked right out of the Starbucks with a bag over one shoulder, leaving her alone with her co ee. It was Tuesday today. If he was that desperate to see the world before he died, then he might just as wel be on a Greyhound bus to some other state or even on a plane to somewhere exotic. Face it. He’s gone for good.
‘She just got up and left!’ said Sal.
> I sensed emotional stress markers in her voice.
‘Wel , duh! Of course she’s upset! She’s just … I mean, she may have just kil ed Liam!’
Sal realized her own voice sounded shril and loud. ‘Oh jahul a! Is he dead? Did she kil him?’
> Insu cient data. The residue signal suggests a sudden
> Insu cient data. The residue signal suggests a sudden and violent enlargement of a dimensional pinhole, releasing a vast amount of energy.
‘Like a bomb?’
> Correct. Just like a bomb.
She slumped down in the o ce chair. ‘So, dead, then,’
she ut ered, looking down at her lap and suddenly beginning to feel the stab of pain. The equivalent, in days, of almost three months had passed since Foster had pul ed her from a fal ing building. So much had happened in that time, a world almost conquered by Nazis and then in the blink of an eye reduced to a radioactive wasteland. Their trip to the basement of the Museum of Natural History, nding the clues … Liam’s message in the guest book. And al the clean-up and x-up after that whole nightmare. It almost felt like another life: Mumbai, Mum and Dad, the burning building.
This place, this scru y archway criss-crossed with cables, had begun to feel like a home, and Liam and Maddy …
even Bob, like an odd new family. Now, in one moment, with one simple mistake, she wondered if that was al gone. She looked up from her hands, wrestling each other in her lap, to see Bob’s silent blinking response on the screen.
> Not necessarily.
‘What? What do you mean “not necessarily”? Do you mean not necessarily dead?’
> A rmative. They may have been transported.
‘You mean like one of our time windows?’
‘You mean like one of our time windows?’
> Correct. The sudden dilation of a dimensional pinhole being used to extract zero-point energy may have functioned in a similar way to a portal.
‘Where? Do you know where? Could we nd them?’
> Negative. I have no possible way of knowing when they would have been transported to. It would be random.
‘But … but they could be alive, right? Alive, somewhere?’
> A rmative, Sal. But in the same geographic location.
‘Is there anything we could do to try to nd them?’
> Negative. We are in the same situation as before we sent the tachyon signal. If the explosion did not kil them, then they are sometime in the past or future. The rising hope she was feeling that there might be a way to nd them and bring them back in one piece began to falter.
> My AI duplicate and Liam may at empt to establish contact with the eld o ce, provided it can be done with a minimum of time contamination.
‘You mean like Liam did with the museum guest book?
A message in history?’
> Correct. If they have not been transported too far in time, it may be possible for them to nd a way to communicate without causing a dangerous level of contamination.
‘So what … we wait? We wait and hope for a signal?’
> A rmative. We must wait and we must observe. There is no other viable course of action.
CHAPTER 23
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
‘Excuse me?’ said Laura. ‘When did you say?’
Franklyn nished wiping his glasses dry and put them back on again. He took his time savouring the silent, rapt at ention of the others sit ing together in the clearing. ‘I said sixty-ve mil ion years ago.’
The others shared a stunned silence. Eyes meeting eyes and al of them wide. The enormity of the fact taking a long while to sink in for al of them.
It was Whitmore who broke the silence. ‘Sixty-ve mil ion years … so that de nitely takes us to near the end of the Cretaceous period.’ He looked at the boy, whose glasses were already beginning to fog up again from the humidity. ‘It is the Cretaceous, isn’t it?’
Franklyn nodded. ‘Correct. Late Cretaceous, to be precise.’
‘We’ve travel ed in time?’ ut ered Kel y. ‘That’s … that’s not possible!’
‘Whoa!’ one of the other kids cried.
Whitmore and Franklyn were looking at each other warily, a gesture not missed by Liam.
‘What? Either of you gentlemen going to tel us what a bleedin’ late crustation is?’ Liam studied them suspiciously. bleedin’ late crustation is?’ Liam studied them suspiciously.
‘You two fel as looked at each other al funny just then. That means something, right?’
Whitmore pursed his lips, his eyebrows arched as if in disbelief at what he was about to ut er. ‘If Franklyn here is right,’ he said, watching the foot-long dragon ies hover and drop among a cluster of ferns nearby, ‘then this is dinosaur times. We’re in dinosaur times.’
Laura gasped. ‘Oh God.’ She took two or three deep breaths that hooted like a steam train coming down a tunnel, like a woman in labour. ‘Oh my God! I was watching Jurassic Park last night! I don’t want to be eaten by a rex. I don’t want to be eaten by a –’
Several of the other students, not al of them girls, began to whimper at the prospect; the rest began to talk at once. Liam watched Whitmore struggling with the situation himself, shaking his head incredulously and bal ing his sts in silence. Kel y meanwhile was gazing up at the blue sky and the slightly odd-coloured sun as if hoping to nd an answer up there.
Somebody needs to take charge, thought Liam. Or they’re al going to die.
He was damned if he was going to volunteer, though –
to be responsible for this lot. He and Becks were probably going to fare much bet er on their own. One of the three men was going to have to step up and take care of these kids. But, as it happened, as Liam was beginning to wonder how the pair of them were going to discreetly extract themselves – with Edward Chan in their possession extract themselves – with Edward Chan in their possession
– the decision was made for him.
‘You!’ said Whitmore, his lost expression wiped away, al of a sudden remembering there was an issue as yet unresolved. His voice cut across the clamour of al the others’. ‘Yes, you! The goth girl,’ he said, pointing at Becks. He looked at Liam. ‘And you. You know what happened, don’t you? The pair of you weren’t in my party. And you knew that explosion was going to happen. So you’d bet er start tel ing us who the heck you are!’
There was an instant silence as al eyes swivel ed to him and Becks.
Liam grinned self-consciously. ‘Uh, we … that’s to say me and Becks here, we’re not er … students as such. We’re sort of agents from another time.’
Fourteen pairs of eyes on him and none of them seemed to have anything close to a grasp on what he’d just said.‘See, we’re time travel ers and we came along today to try to protect him,’ he said, pointing at Edward Chan who was sit ing on the grass, arms wrapped round his huddled knees.
Edward Chan’s eyes widened. ‘Uh? Am I in trouble?’
‘You, Edward. We came to nd out how we were going to protect you from an at empt on your life.’
The others looked at the smal Chinese boy then back at Liam.
‘You bet er explain about him, Becks,’ said Liam.
‘You’ve got al the facts in your head.’
‘You’ve got al the facts in your head.’
Becks nodded. ‘Listen careful y,’ she began. ‘Time travel wil become a viable technology in the year 2044 when a Professor Roald Waldstein wil build the world’s rst time machine and successful y transport himself into the past and return safely to his time. The practical technology developed by Waldstein in 2044 is largely based on the theories developed and published in Scienti c American by the Department of Physics, University of Texas in 2031. The article is entitled “Zero-point Energy: energy from space-time vacuum, or inter-dimensional leakage?”.’
Kel y’s tired face lit up. ‘You got a be kidding?’
Whitmore looked at the bewildered young boy hugging his own knees on the ground in front of him. ‘So how does this a ect this boy?’
Becks’s cool grey eyes panned smoothly across to Chan.
‘The article published in Scienti c American is a reproduction of a maths thesis presented by one Edward Aaron Chan. An act of academic plagiarism by his supervising professor.’
Edward looked up at her. ‘Me? Real y?’
‘Correct. You wil submit your dissertation to the Department of Physics for evaluation with an almost identical title in the summer of 2029, when you are twenty-six years of age. The department head, Professor Miles Jackson, wil at empt to take credit for your work when it is approved for publication several months later, but he wil be exposed as a plagiarist shortly after the article’s publication.’
article’s publication.’
‘But you said you’d come to protect him from an at empt on his life … why would someone want to kil Chan?’ asked Whitmore.
‘Edward Chan is the true originator of time travel,’
replied Becks. ‘In the future, 2051, time-travel technology becomes forbidden under international law because of the danger it poses to al mankind. This law is a result of years of campaigning by Roald Waldstein, the inventor of the rst viable time machine, to prevent any further development of the technology.’
‘Wald–… the man who builds this rst machine?’ said one of the students, a tough-looking Hispanic boy. Liam noticed his name tag was stil on his chest: JUAN HERNANDEZ. Becks’s gaze panned across to him. She waited silently for him to continue.
‘Why?’ asked Juan. ‘Why build the thing, then, you know, campaign against usin’ it? Don’t make any sense.’
Liam answered. ‘Waldstein never ever revealed what he saw on his rst and only trip into the past … never talked to anyone about it. It was a big secret what he saw. But he was once heard to say that he’d looked upon the very bowels of Hel itself.’ Liam could have added more, could have added that maybe he’d glimpsed, for a few seconds, something of that himself.
Becks continued. ‘Waldstein’s campaign gained popular support. It is logical to presume that it may be one of his more fanatical supporters who has somehow managed to travel back in time to nd Chan and at empt to kil him, to travel back in time to nd Chan and at empt to kil him, to retroactively prevent him writing his thesis, and thus prevent or forestal the invention of time travel.’
A long silence fol owed l ed only with the gentle rustle of the jungle’s trees and the far-o high-pitched squawk of some jungle creature. It was Whitmore who cut it short.
‘Wel , OK … that’s al very fascinating, but what just happened? Where are we and how do we get back?’
Becks’s eyelids ut ered for a moment. ‘The
geopositional coordinates wil not have changed. We are exactly where we were.’
‘Yeah, right, man!’ snapped Juan. ‘There ain’t no jungle like this. Not in Texas!’
‘We’re stil in the same place,’ said Liam, ‘but it’s when we are that’s changed. Right?’
‘A rmative.’ Liam nudged Becks. ‘Yes …’ Becks corrected herself.
‘Which, if Franklyn is correct, is sixty-ve mil ion years ago,’ said Whitmore, loosening his tie and unbut oning the top but on of his sky-blue shirt, already stained with dark underarm patches of sweat.
Liam smiled thinly. ‘Yup, that’s about it.’
The technician who’d survived and come through with them dipped his head and shook it. ‘Then we real y are total y, total y in trouble, man.’
Liam wanted to say something like he’d been in this kind of mess before, that there might possibly be a way out of here for them, that at the very least they had a genetical y enhanced and very lethal combat unit, with an genetical y enhanced and very lethal combat unit, with an embedded supercomputer, disguised as an oversized gothic Barbie dol , here to help them al out. But he gured right now that would probably be one detail too many for them to have to cope with.
Kel y removed his linen jacket, no longer looking smooth and groomed and, like Whitmore, sweating large dark patches in the hot and humid air. ‘So what are we going to do now?’
And, once more, al eyes rested on Liam.
Aw, Jay-zus … What? I’m in charge now?
It looked like he and Becks weren’t going to be able to sidle away, that they were lumbered with the others. Liam sighed. ‘Survival,’ he said eventual y. ‘I suppose we’d bet er start thinking about that. You know? Water, food, weapons, some sort of a camp. The rest … if there is a rest
… wel , I suppose that can come later.’
CHAPTER 24
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Howard took a break from the work of hacking at the vines and bamboo canes with his improvised machete: a jagged strip of metal – part of the reactor’s shel – with a handle made of coarse leaves wrapped round one end and secured with shoelaces. As a machete it worked surprisingly wel and, from the other jagged strips of reinforced al oy that had materialized in the past with them, they’d managed to produce nine very useful cut ing implements like this one.
The Hispanic boy, Juan, was working alongside him while across the clearing, shimmering with the heat of the midday sun, he could see some of the others fashioning simple spears out of the thicker bamboo canes they’d cut down.
‘That’s bul , man,’ mut ered Juan, fol owing his gaze.
‘We ain’t gonna kil anything with these pointy sticks.’
Howard nodded wearily and grunted something back, but his eyes were on Chan, standing next to that weird redhaired girl, as he ham-stedly at empted to whit le a sharp end on a three-foot cane. She and the odd Irish boy …
they’d given their names as Becks and Liam, but if they were covert agency operatives from the year 2001, they were covert agency operatives from the year 2001, they were probably aliases.
Which agency, though? Who sent them?
As far as Howard knew, no government, anywhere, was meant to have functioning time-travel technology. Although obviously the most powerful nations – the Chinese Federation, the European Bloc, the United States –
must secretly have been developing it. And those two presumably must be eld operatives working for one of them, here to protect Chan.
The Irish boy seemed to be cal ing the shots, with Whitmore, Kel y and the technician, Lam, happy for him to do so. Howard was content to go along with the status quo for now. Happy to carry on playing the role of timid young Lenny Baumgardner, a high-school student with straight As and a perfect school at endance record. It kept things simple for the moment. After al , the presiding question now was one of survival – the basics: food, water, shelter.
But his focus had to remain, whatever happened, on the mission, on what he’d set out to do: to end young Chan’s life and absolutely guarantee that the uniquely bril iant theoretical concepts his older, twenty-six-year-old mathematician’s mind would one day produce would never see the light of day. Bril iance like Chan’s was rare; the kind of genius and intuition that comes along once in a generation, once in a century even.
Chan’s work was going to end up being as life-changing as Einstein’s once was. More so, in fact.
as Einstein’s once was. More so, in fact.
Without that published thesis the famous Waldstein would perhaps never have been anything more than an anonymous hobbyist inventor working in his garage. While the world of 2055 might be facing a dark time ahead with water, food and energy shortages, global warming and catastrophic levels of over-population, at the very least, history, as it was, would stil be safe; at the very least, mankind would not be meddling with dimensions it had no possibility of understanding, dimensions that could contain anything.
Just because a door can be opened … doesn’t mean it should be opened.
But Chan was here now … and not in the year 2029, sixty-ve mil ion years away from helping mankind make its biggest-ever mistake. Howard wondered whether that meant his mission was as good as done. Did he stil need to kil him? After al , the explosion, presumably caused by something to do with those two agents, perhaps some side e ect of time travel and the elds of energy it radiates, had propel ed them far back in time. Surely further back in time than any prototype time machine currently in development could ever reach. And how would they know when they were, anyway? Sixty-ve mil ion years to choose from. Like a needle in a haystack. Like a needle in a whole barn ful of hay, in fact.
Go ahead, pick a year … see if you get lucky. He smiled.
It’s done. The world’s safe now. It’s done.
It’s done. The world’s safe now. It’s done.
Which was a relief, because now al he had to think about was the business of survival, here in this jungle with nothing for company but over-large dragon ies and whatever other giant creepy-crawlies and Cretaceous creatures lurked in the jungle. And, of course, a bunch of frightened kids and several men who ought to be showing a lit le more backbone.
Howard had done his bit for mankind … now, just surviving in this wilderness for the foreseeable future – he wasn’t ready yet to be a dino dinner – that was for him. He looked up at the thick edge of the jungle ahead of him: a ribbon of dark green foliage and tal canopy trees that wrapped itself al the way round the clearing. And God knows what big hungry things are wandering around in there.
∗
‘Oh, that’s just great. That’s just bloody great.’ Liam stared at the swiftly surging river: a tumbling torrent of white suds that swirled around and over a bed of worn boulders.
‘So, it runs al the way around us,’ said Kel y. His smart linen business suit was smudged with dirt and sweat. Not the most practical clothing for jungle trekking. He’d tied o the jacket round his waist and rol ed up the sleeves of his white shirt. The tie was stil on, though, Liam noticed. A token that Kel y was not quite ready to abandon hope that help might arrive at any moment and he’d want to look his best for it.
‘I think we’re on a sort of island,’ Kel y continued.
‘I think we’re on a sort of island,’ Kel y continued. They’d spent the morning exploring the immediate surroundings beyond the clearing. Whichever direction they’d taken they’d soon come across the energetic roar of water and glimpsed the glinting, fast-moving river through the thinning jungle.
Island was about right. Approximately three or four acres of jungle with a central clearing, shaped roughly like a tear drop. The pointed tip of the island was where they stood now staring at the rol ing water. The river split in two around their spit of land; to the right of them it broadened out into a wide, slower-moving channel. Slower-moving, but stil brisk enough so that Liam wouldn’t dare chance trying to cross it. But then he couldn’t swim. More than that … water scared the bejeezus out of him. Not that he needed the others to know anything about his pet fears right now.
To their left the river compressed into a narrower channel thirty feet across, lined with boulders, and became a violent roaring ribbon of snow-white froth and energy. A fool might try to swim the wider channel, but only a completely mad fool would at empt a crossing on this side.
‘We’re trapped on here,’ said Laura, looking around at the others. ‘Aren’t we?’
‘At least we’ve got drinking water.’ Liam shrugged. He gave them al a cheery smile. ‘So it’s not al bad news.’
Becks took a couple of steps down the wet shingle towards the raging river and silently appraised their surroundings. After a while she turned round. ‘The island is surroundings. After a while she turned round. ‘The island is a suitable defensive position.’
‘Defensive?’ cal ed out one of the students. Liam turned round. It was a large boy, whose cheeks glistened with sweat beneath a mop of dark frizzy hair and he was stil wearing his name tag: JONAH MIDDLETON. ‘Defensible against what, dude?’
‘Dinosaurs,’ ut ered Laura, her voice shuddering slightly. Whitmore nodded. ‘Yes, dinosaurs.’ He turned to Franklyn. ‘How good’s your knowledge of the late Cretaceous?’
‘Pret y good,’ he replied. ‘You want to know what species we can expect to encounter?’
‘Please, tel me we don’t get the T-rex,’ blurted Laura.
‘Not that.’
‘Oh, we got those al right.’ Franklyn put his hands on his hips. ‘But they’re more likely found on open terrain. Not jungle like this.’
‘It’s the velociraptors that scared me,’ said Lam. His head bobbed energetical y as he talked, his dark ponytail wagging like a dog’s tail as he looked from one person to another. ‘Seriously scary things, those.’ He nodded sombrely. ‘I seen al three Jurassic movies, guys … and it’s those smart lit le ones you got to watch out for.’
‘There are no raptors.’ Franklyn shook his head.
‘They’re Asian and died out eighty-ve mil ion years ago. We should expect to see … lemmesee … ankylosaurus, that’s the tank-shaped one with a spiky club for a tail. Pachycephalosaurus, that’s the upright one with, like, a Pachycephalosaurus, that’s the upright one with, like, a cyclist’s safety helmet on his head. Triceratops … you al know that one, right?’
Heads nodded.
‘Parasaurolophus … the duck-bil ed one with that Elvisqui bone sticking out backwards.’
‘But those are al herbivores, aren’t they?’ said Whitmore. ‘What about the carnivores?’
Franklyn pursed his lips. ‘We got rex, of course, but no raptors. That’s the good news.’
‘Oh, great,’ sighed Laura. ‘That means there’s bad news.’
‘Wel … I’m afraid there are several varieties of the smal er therapods,’ he said, by way of explanation. Liam shrugged at him. ‘And those are what?’
‘Therapods – same genus as the raptor,’ Franklyn continued. ‘Smal predators, three to six foot tal . They walk on their back legs and have poorly developed front arms. They’re pack hunters.’
‘Three to six foot?’ said Liam. ‘That doesn’t sound so bad, then.’
‘Yo, dude,’ said Jonah. ‘You actual y, like, seen the Jurassic Park movies?’
Liam shook his head. ‘No. I presume it’s one of them talkie motion pictures?’
Several of the students glanced at each other.
‘Talkie motion pictures? You did say you were from the future, didn’t you?’ said Kel y.
‘Wel , not as such. Not directly … no. Actual y I’m fro–’
‘Caution!’ said Becks, striding back up the shingle
‘Caution!’ said Becks, striding back up the shingle towards them. ‘Con dential information.’ Her glare silenced the stirring murmur of voices. ‘That is unnecessary data. You do not need to know anything about the operative, Liam O’Connor.’
‘Actual y, I think I’d like to know a lit le more about you as wel ,’ said Whitmore. ‘I mean who the h–?’
‘Stop!’ barked Becks. ‘This conversation wil now cease!’
Laura made a face. She stepped forward and planted herself in front of Becks. Both girls about the same height, eyes locked in a silent chal enge of each other. ‘Oh? And who exactly made you the boss?’
Becks silently appraised her. ‘You are a contaminant and a mission liability.’
‘What? What’s that supposed to mean?’
Becks’s cold glare remained on the girl. For an unset ling moment Liam wondered whether she might just reach out and snap Laura’s neck like a dry twig. He’d seen Bob e ortlessly do far worse to countless grown combat-t men.
‘Becks!’ he cal ed out. ‘Leave her alone!’
The support unit nal y spoke. ‘Liam O’Connor is …
boss. I am just the support unit.’
‘Support unit?’ Laura’s face creased with a look of bemusement. She turned to Liam. ‘Sheesh, what exactly is the problem with your sister? She got some kind of behavioural problem?’
‘She talks like some kind of robot,’ said Keisha.
‘Wel now, since you –’ Liam was about to explain, but
‘Wel now, since you –’ Liam was about to explain, but Becks cut him o again. ‘Irrelevant data.’ She took a step away from Laura towards him, Laura’s chal enge instantly dismissed and forgot en. ‘Recommendation, Liam.’
Liam nodded. ‘Go on.’
‘A bridging device can be constructed.’ She turned her gaze towards the roaring river to their left. ‘The narrowest width is precisely thirty-two feet, seven inches.’ Her eyes then scanned the tal and straight trunks of the nearest deciduous trees along the riverbank. ‘These trees are al of suitable length.’
‘And just how are we supposed to fel a tree!’ said Lam.
‘Al we’ve got is Mr Kel y’s penknife, some bamboo spears and a bunch of freakin’ useless hatchets.’
Liam decided he’d bet er start sounding decisive and leader-like. ‘Wel now, listen. Me and Becks’l gure something out, so we wil . Right … Becks? … Sis?’
She looked at him. ‘Question.’
‘What?’
‘Are we stil pretending to be brother and sister?’
The others stared at them.
Liam sighed. ‘Not any more.’
CHAPTER 25
2001, New York
Sal spun round in the chair at the sound of the rol er shut er rat ling up. ‘Maddy?’
Maddy ducked beneath and into the archway. ‘Yeah, it’s me,’ she replied, in a dul , lifeless voice.
‘I thought you’d left us. Maybe gone for good.’
Maddy’s face creased with a tired smile as she crossed the oor. ‘It did cross my mind.’
‘You shouldn’t blame yourself. But look –’
‘Don’t, please.’ Maddy raised a hand to hush her. She slumped down in a swivel chair beside Sal. ‘I screwed up. I was hasty and impatient and kil ed Liam in the process. I’ve got to nd my own way of dealing with that. And it’s not going to help you trying to tel me that I shouldn’t be beating myself up over it.’ She buried her face in her hands, pushing up her glasses and rubbing tired eyes.
‘No, listen to me,’ replied Sal, sit ing forward. ‘Bob says he might not be dead.’
Maddy peered through her ngers.
‘In fact, Bob’s been analysing the tachyon signature around the window we opened. He’s almost certain that we caused a portal, not an explosion.’
The screen in front of them ickered to life. The screen in front of them ickered to life.
> Sal is correct. An 87% probability of a random portal.
Sal reached out for her arm. ‘He’s alive, Maddy. Do you see? Alive.’ She made a face. ‘Probably.’
Slowly Maddy lowered her hands from her face. ‘Oh my God. You serious?’
‘Yeah.’
Maddy turned towards the screen. ‘Bob? You’re sure of this?’
> 87% probability. The decay signature of the particles while our window was open was very similar in structure to the decay of a closing window.
‘Can you work out where we sent him?’
> Where is likely to be nowhere. He was unlikely to have been geographical y repositioned.
‘When, then? When?’
> Negative. I have no data.
The momentary look of hope on Maddy’s face quickly slipped away. ‘So we’ve blasted him into history and we’ve no idea when?’
> A rmative.
She looked at Sal. ‘And what? I’m supposed to feel bet er about this? This is supposed to be good news?’
‘He’s alive, Maddy. That’s something.’
‘He’s lost. Lost for good. Might as wel be dead. But don’t you see … it’s worse than that. If he and the other support unit, and god knows how many other people, have been blasted back into history, we’ve real y messed have been blasted back into history, we’ve real y messed up. That’s a whole load of contamination right there.’
‘So? We’ve been here before. We’ve xed time before. In fact … look, if they cause a whole load of contamination, that’s a good thing. Right, Bob? That means we’ve got a chance to –’
> Negative. Contamination is to be avoided.
‘But if they change things and we get time waves here in 2001 it’l give us some sort of clue where they are.’
> A rmative.
‘See? We can nd them. It’s possible. For example, if Liam’s any time in the last century he could make his way to New York and use the guest book again.’
Maddy shook her head. ‘Maybe, maybe. But … they could be any time. Any time, Sal. I mean, not just a year ago, or a hundred. But maybe a thousand, ten thousand …
a mil ion. God, if he’s just ve hundred years back, what document could he scribble in then? There wasn’t a writ en language here in America in those days. It was just Indians and wilderness.’
Sal shrugged.
‘And if he’s like thousands of years back …’ She turned to look at the screen. ‘That’s possible, right?’
> A rmative. Provided there is enough energy invested in a portal there is no limit to how far back in time a subject can be sent.
‘If he’s gone back thousands of years, Sal, any at empt to contact us could total y change history. I mean real y mess things up. Just look at what happened when those mess things up. Just look at what happened when those neo-Nazis went back to 1941. They turned the present into a nuclear wasteland!’
‘I’m just saying …’
‘Saying? Saying what? We’re total y messed up here!
God … there could already be a freaking time wave on the way! And then what? New York vanishes? More zombies?’
Sal reached for her arm again. ‘Maddy … please! You’ve got to stay calm. We need you calm. You’re the strategist. You can gure this out. I know you can.’
Maddy shook her head. ‘Uhh,’ she mut ered. ‘Foster’d gure it out. But me?’
He’d know exactly what to do. In fact, if the old man had been here, he would have been smart enough not to have caused this problem in the rst place.
But he’s out there, right? He’s out there somewhere in New York. What about the Starbucks? That was a Monday morning at about nine. If I went there tomorrow morning
… She quickly realized that wouldn’t work. Foster was gone. He wasn’t back in the arch when the eld o ce bubble reset. Foster was gone from their forty-eight-hour world.
Gone from Monday and Tuesday. Maddy’s jaw suddenly dropped open. What about Wednesday?
Sal was looking at her. ‘Maddy? You OK?’
But where would he be on Wednesday, September twelfth? She tried to remember their last conversation in the co ee shop. She’d asked him where he’d go, what he the co ee shop. She’d asked him where he’d go, what he planned to do with the time he had left to live. He’d said he’d always wanted to visit New York, to see the sights. Just like a tourist. Maddy herself had been to New York so many times before her ‘death’, that she no longer thought like a tourist, no longer mental y checked o the places one had to go see.
‘Sal, what places would you visit in New York, if this was like a holiday trip?’
‘Uh?’
‘If you were a tourist? What would you most want to go see?’
‘Why are you –?’
‘Just tel me!’
She scowled in thought for a moment. ‘Wel , I suppose the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the Museum of Natural History. Maddy, why? What’re you thinking?’
Maddy nodded. Yes. The Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty. She could try those rst.
‘Maddy?’
She looked up at Sal. ‘I’m going to go nd Foster. Bring him back if I can. He’l know what to do, Sal. Because I sure don’t.’
‘But he’s gone for good you said. He wasn’t here when the bubble reset. He’s gone.’
‘Gone from our two days, yeah. But not Wednesday …
not Thursday, not any other day after that.’
‘You’re going to ride forward?’
‘You’re going to ride forward?’
Maddy considered that, but the less time travel she did –
forward or backwards – the bet er. Foster had quietly told her timeriding was a bit like smoking; like a single cigaret e, it was impossible to say for sure how much a single smoke might take o your life, but if you could ever avoid having a cigaret e that could only be a good thing.
‘I’l miss the reset. That’s what I’l do,’ said Maddy. ‘I’l go into Wednesday and hang around those places. Who knows? I might get lucky.’
‘You can’t do that! You’l be gone for good like Foster!’
‘No … we’l schedule a return window.’ Maddy pinched her lip in thought. ‘Yeah, we’l schedule a window at, let’s say, eight in the evening on Wednesday.’ She turned round and pointed towards the shut er door. ‘Just outside the archway in our side street. That’l bring me right back into our time bubble, back into Monday.’
‘But what if a time wave happens while you’re gone?’
Maddy shrugged, resigned. ‘I can’t see you coping any worse than Maddy “Mess-up” Carter’s done so far, right?’
‘Oh shadd-yah! We should be guring out how to get Liam back, not messing around visiting tourist at ractions.’
‘Yeah? But think about it – there’s nothing we can do, is there? Just wait around … wait for a time wave to hit us and hope it’l lead us directly to him? That’s it. That’s pret y much al we can do right now. Just wait. Wel , at least while we’re sit ing around here doing nothing useful I can try and nd Foster, see what else he can suggest.’
Sal clamped her mouth shut.
Sal clamped her mouth shut.
‘Make sense?’
Sal nodded slowly. ‘OK,’ she replied, ddling with a pair of plastic bangles on her wrist. ‘Do you want me to come with you? Two pairs of eyes?’
The screen in front of them ickered.
> Recommendation: Sal should remain here as the observer.
Maddy nodded reluctantly. ‘Bob’s right. If we get a time ripple preceding a wave, we need you here as our early heads-up. You should stay here and do your mid-morning walk around Times Square just like always. And, anyway, if the poop hits the fan and for some reason I end up being stuck out in Wednesday it’l be good to know there’s someone left holding the fort, right?’
Sal tried a con dent nod. ‘Uh … yeah.’
‘Right … that’s the plan, then.’ Maddy looked at her watch. It was just gone ve in the afternoon. Outside, the sun would be looking ahead for a place to set le beyond the smoke-l ed sky of Manhat an, and most of New York was already back at home, the normal day of work abandoned hours ago as they silently watched live news feeds from their dinner tables.
Tonight, New York was going to be a ghost town, just like it always was on the Tuesday as the clock ticked down towards their eld o ce time bubble reset ing itself.
CHAPTER 26
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Liam wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. ‘Jay-zus, it’s almost as hot as the old lady’s boiler room, so it is.’
‘Old lady?’ It was Mr Whitmore.
Liam thought the man had been far enough behind not to hear his bad-tempered mut erings. He shrugged. ‘Oh, just a … just an old ship I used to work on.’
He stopped where he was, catching his breath for a moment. The hot humid air felt heavy on his lungs. They stood stil for a while, trading ragged breaths and listening to the subdued noises of the jungle around them, the tap of water dripping on waxy leaves, the creak of the tal canopy trees subtly swaying and shifting, the echoing chat er and squawk of some ying creatures far above amid the branches.
Further back down the trail he’d been hacking out with his improvised machete, he heard the others stumbling towards them: Franklyn, their resident dino expert grinning at the prehistoric jungle around him like a kid in a candy store; Lam behind him, squinting up at the bright lances of sunlight piercing down through the cathedral-like vaulted roof of arched branches and thick leaves, and vaulted roof of arched branches and thick leaves, and Jonah Middleton whistling something tuneless as he stumbled clumsily after them. The rest of the group were back on their ‘island’ xing a counterweight to the bridge so it could be raised and constructing a camp under Becks’s supervision.
Two days and nights they’d been here already and both nights, like clockwork, rain had come down in a torrential downpour, soaking them al and making sleep impossible. Tonight hopeful y, with Becks hard at work – a one-man construction team, they’d at least have shelters to huddle beneath.
‘You used to work on a ship?’ said Whitmore, his breath wheezing past each word. ‘Was that before you became …
what did you say you were – some sort of time-travel ing secret agent?’
‘I didn’t real y say it like that, Mr Whitmore. Did I?’
He scratched his beard. ‘I think that’s exactly what you said.’
‘Oh wel , even though that does sound a lit le barmy, that pret y much describes me and Becks, so it does.’
Whitmore shook his head. ‘I’m stil trying to get my head round this being real, you know? It’s just –’
Liam grinned. ‘Oh, it’l mess with your head al right. That’s for sure.’
‘You’re real y from the future?’
‘Wel , actual y, not precisely the future as it happens.’
Whitmore looked confused by that.
Liam wondered if he should real y say any more. Becks Liam wondered if he should real y say any more. Becks was right in that the more information they handed out to these people the greater the potential risk to blowing the agency’s anonymity. But he also gured what the heck …
they were here and the future was sixty-ve mil ion years away.
Might as wel be hung for a sheep as a lamb.
‘I was born in Cork, in Ireland in 1896, if you must know. And I should’ve died in 1912.’ He looked at Whitmore and his grin spread even wider. ‘Aboard a ship you might just have heard a lit le something about … the Titanic.’
The man’s eyes widened. Lam, Franklyn and Jonah joined them then, al ve of them l ing the quiet jungle with their rasping breath.
‘What’s up?’ said Lam, noticing the goggle-eyed expression on Whitmore’s face.
‘That’s … surely … that’s just impossible!’ blustered Whitmore.
‘Wel now,’ replied Liam, looking around at the Cretaceous foliage, ‘you’d think al of this lit le pickle we’re in would be impossible, right? I mean … us lot stranded in dinosaur times?’
Whitmore ran a hand through his thinning salt and pepper hair. ‘But the Titanic … you were actual y on the Titanic?’
‘Junior steward, deck E, so I was.’
Jonah pushed his frizzy fringe out of eyes that were l ing his face. ‘No … way … dude!’
l ing his face. ‘No … way … dude!’
Lam wiped some sweat from his brow. ‘This is just get ing weirder and weirder.’
‘I was recruited, see. The agency plucked me moments from death just as the ship’s spine snapped and apparently both halves went sliding under. Made no di erence to time, do you see? It made no di erence to history whether my bones ended up at the bot om of the Atlantic with everyone else’s or not. That’s how the agency recruits …
poor fools like me who’l never be missed.’
‘My God,’ whispered Whitmore. ‘That’s real y quite incredible.’
‘What about the other one?’ asked Franklyn.
Jonah nodded appreciatively. ‘Yeah, your foxy goth girlfriend.’
Liam assumed he was referring to the support unit.
‘Becks? No … she’s, uh … she’s certainly not my girlfriend.
’ ‘Whatever,’ said Franklyn. ‘Where does she come from?’
Lam shook his head. ‘Maybe we should be asking when does she come from?’
Franklyn’s face sti ened at being corrected. ‘Yes …
when.’
Liam decided a smal white lie was bet er right now. Tel ing them she was some kind of a robot kil ing machine probably wasn’t the best thing to be tel ing them. The last thing their lit le group needed was a reason not to trust Becks. They al needed each other, and they certainly needed her help.
needed her help.
‘Oh, Becks is from the future. 2050-something or other. I guess that’s why she talks a lit le funny every now and then.’
‘She is kind of weird,’ said Franklyn. ‘Like Spock … or something.’
‘So, Liam, since it looks like you’re the only one who understands what’s happened here,’ said Whitmore, ‘it seems we’re al going to have to rely on you to get us home. I presume you have some sort of a plan of action?
You know … beyond merely exploring our immediate surroundings.’
A plan? The closest thing to doing any ‘planning’ so far had been guring out how he’d use the rubbish machete in his hand if a dinosaur was to suddenly emerge from the undergrowth ahead.
‘The plan?’
‘Yes,’ said Whitmore, ‘I mean … I presume there’s a way out of this mess for us, isn’t there?’
Liam could see the other three were staring expectantly at him. ‘Wel , uh … wel , one thing’s for sure, gentlemen. We need to stay right where we are, on that island.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s the exact same place that we were.’
Joseph Lam nodded. ‘The same geo-coordinates as the lab, right?’
‘That’s right. We haven’t moved an inch in position …
just in time. If we happened to up sticks and move camp somewhere else, it would make it even harder for somewhere else, it would make it even harder for someone to nd us. So we’re best staying put right where we are.’
Whitmore dabbed at his damp face with the cu of his shirt. ‘This agency you work for … are they like a government agency? Like the CIA? Like the FBI?
Something like that?’
Liam hadn’t heard of either of those. So he decided to do what he did best: blu . ‘Sure, they’re just like them fel as, Mr Whitmore, but you know … uhh … much bigger and bet er, and, of course, from the future.’
‘And they’re going to come for us, right? They’re going to get us al out of here, aren’t they?’
Liam o ered him a stern, con dent nod. ‘Sure they are. We’ve just got to hold on here. It’l take them a lit le time to nd us … but they wil . I assure you, they wil .’
They looked at each other uncertainly, until the scraggly beard beneath Whitmore’s stubby round nose stretched with a smile. ‘Wel , al right, then. I’m sure between us we’ve got enough know-how to make do for a few days.’
His smile spread to the others.
‘I’d like to see at least one dinosaur rst, though,’ said Franklyn. ‘Be real lame not to.’
‘Yeah,’ said Jonah, pul ing out a mobile phone from his pocket. ‘That would be, like, awesome. You know? I could stick it up on YouTube. Whoa! No!’ He pushed his frizzy mop of hair aside. ‘Bet er than that, dude … do it as a payper-download. I could make, like, mil ions out of this …’
Whitmore shook his head. ‘What is it with you kids Whitmore shook his head. ‘What is it with you kids these days?’
‘Opportunity,’ replied Jonah. ‘That’s what it is, my man
… a golden freakin’ money-makin’ opportunity.’
Whitmore sighed.
CHAPTER 27
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Becks stood to one side dispassionately observing the work of the others as they hacked at the slim, straight trunks of the smal er trees they’d already fel ed, stripping branches from their sides to produce usable lightweight logs for construction.
She had them divided into two groups. One doing this job, the other group lashing the logs together with lengths of twisted vine to form wigwam-shaped frames. On top of these they could layer the big waxy leaves that drooped from the canopy trees. A few layers of those would give them a covering that would almost be waterproof. That had been Liam’s instruction. Make shelters. But her cool grey eyes panned uneasily across the clearing, observing the area of jungle that had been hacked away, the disturbed jungle oor where the smal er trees had been uprooted. Her eyes picked out the slashes of machete blows on other bigger trees that had proven too di cult to fel or uproot and the compressed tracks of footprints on the ground – the distinct oval of signatures of a human presence.
> [Evaluation: time contamination is increasing]
Every movement these people made, every footstep, Every movement these people made, every footstep, every swipe of a blunt blade, was adding to a growing count of potential contamination. Yet Liam O’Connor’s instruction to her was a mission priority, an override. As the mission operative, his orders were as nal and nonnegotiable as any hard-coded line of programming in her head.
He’d been very speci c: that she was to organize the completion of the bridge and the building of a camp. And, for good measure, some kind of smal enclosure, a palisade that they could al hide inside just in case any nasty found its way on to their island.
And so she had. Just like their last mission, back when her AI software had been assigned the ident. ‘Bob’, she was once again obediently fol owing orders. There was something vaguely comforting about being in a brand-new functioning body, being on a mission once again with Liam O’Connor. They had functioned together very e ciently last time – successful y correcting a signi cant time contamination against exceedingly unfavourable odds. But there’d been something … untidy … about the AI’s learning curve. As Bob, it had discovered that the strict mission parameters could be overwrit en with new ones, that under extreme circumstances the col ection of software routines was actual y capable of making a
‘decision’.
That in itself had been a disturbing realization. As Bob, the AI had learned that its core programming could be subtly in uenced, swayed, by something else: the tiny subtly in uenced, swayed, by something else: the tiny nodule of organic intel igence the computer chip was connected to. The undeveloped foetal brain of this genetical y engineered frame. As Bob, the AI had experienced a eeting taste of something that these humans must al take for granted. Emotion. The AI had discovered something very, very odd … that it actual y
‘liked’ Liam O’Connor.
Since that rst clone body had been irreparably damaged in the snowy woods down the hil from Adolf Hitler’s winter Berghof retreat and the AI uploaded into the eld o ce’s mainframe – an entirely non-organic, disembodied existence – the AI had had much time to re ect on al that it had learned from those six months in the past.
Conclusions
1. AI is now capable of referring to the newly developed AI routines as … ‘I’, ‘Me’, ‘Myself’. 2. ‘I’ am now capable of limited decision-making. 3. Within an organic hardware housing, ‘I’ am capable of limited emotional stimulation.
And most important of al …
4. ‘I’ ‘like’ Liam O’Connor.
Becks continued to watch the humans at work and realized Becks continued to watch the humans at work and realized that part of her onboard code was insistently whispering a warning to her that a decision needed to be made, and made very soon. The humans were beginning to cause dangerously unacceptable levels of contamination in this jungle clearing with al that they were doing. With every footstep, with every log being cut down, there was an increased possibility that some fossilized forensic clue would survive sixty-ve mil ion years to be found in the future, and quite clearly reveal that humans had visited this time.
Unacceptable.
Liam O’Connor’s instructions to her were at odds with the basic protocols of journeying into the past, that contamination must be kept to an absolute minimum. Even now, by simply being here, these people could be causing a far greater time wave than the assassination of Edward Chan in 2015 might have caused.
Recommendation
1. Terminate al humans, including mission operative Liam O’Connor.
2. Destroy al traces of human artefacts and habitation in this location.
3. Self-terminate.
The recommendation was faultlessly logical and strategical y sound. But that smal nodule of primitive strategical y sound. But that smal nodule of primitive organic mat er reminded her software that Liam was a friend.
And friends don’t kil friends.
Becks blinked away the thought. It was an unwelcome distraction.
Decision Options
1. Proceed immediately with mission recommendation. 2. Wait for operative Liam O’Connor and discuss. A decision. Never easy. Becks’s internal silicon wafer processor began to rapidly warm up as gigabytes of data rat led through software lters. Her lifeless grey eyes blinked in rapid succession as she desperately struggled to produce an answer and her ngers absentmindedly tightened round the handle of the machete. She barely registered the blonde-haired female human cal ed Laura approaching her.
‘Hey!’ the girl cal ed out. ‘You going to give us a hand or just stand there and watch us do the work? Huh?
Becks?’
Becks’s eyes slowly swivel ed and locked on the girl, but she said nothing. Her mind was very, very busy.
CHAPTER 28
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Liam saw it rst: amid the relentless green and ochre of the jungle, it was an unmissable splash of bright crimson. He raised his hand, turned round and put a nger to his lips, shushing Lam and Jonah at the back who’d been chat ering for the last ve minutes about comicbooks. They hushed immediately.
Whitmore stepped quietly forward and joined him.
‘What is it?’
Liam pointed through a thin veil of leaves. ‘Blood …
lots of it, by the look of things.’
Whitmore swal owed and looked goggle-eyed again.
‘Oh boy,’ he whispered. ‘Oh boy. Oh boy.’
Franklyn joined them. Unlike Whitmore, his eyes lit up with joy. ‘Excel ent!’ he gasped. ‘Looks like something made a kil .’
Whitmore swal owed. ‘That’s exactly what I’m worried about.’ He looked at Liam. ‘I suggest we quietly back up and –’ But before Whitmore could nish Franklyn pushed his way forward through low sweeping fern fronds and into a smal clearing.
‘Oh, this is so awesome! Come on!’ he cal ed to them.
‘We must have frightened the predator o !’
‘We must have frightened the predator o !’
Liam looked at the teacher and shrugged. ‘Wel , I suppose if we’ve scared some dinosaur away, the last thing we ought to start doing now is look frightened ourselves. We’d bet er brass it out, right?’
By the look of Whitmore’s stil goggling eyes, he’d have been much happier with the backing quietly away plan. Liam left him thinking it over as he stepped forward through the fern leaves and into the clearing. Franklyn was squat ing over the eviscerated ribcage of some large beast, wrinkling his nose at the fetid smel of shredded organs, pul ed out and splayed across the jungle oor.
Liam felt something stir and rol queasily in his empty stomach. ‘Jay-zus, that’s disgusting.’
‘A recent kil by the look of it,’ said Franklyn, prodding the large carcass with his ngers. Shreds of tat ered muscle tissue swayed from the ends of the ribs as the body rocked slightly. Lam, Jonah and Whitmore emerged behind Liam.
‘Oh, man, that’s total y gross!’ said Jonah, holding his nose at the pungent smel of death.
‘I real y think we shouldn’t hang about here,’ said Whitmore. ‘Whatever did this might stil be close by.’
Franklyn nodded and smiled. ‘Exactly! Maybe we’l actual y get a chance to see something!’
Liam looked around the dense foliage, wary that some large creature with very sharp claws and teeth might just be watching them now. ‘You know, I think Mr Whitmore’s got the right idea. Maybe we should probably back o .’
got the right idea. Maybe we should probably back o .’
‘Look at these marks on the hide,’ said Franklyn, ignoring them. ‘The lacerations, lots of them, smal ones, not large like a rex might do.’ He studied the ground. ‘See?
’ Liam looked at where he was pointing and saw several three-pronged indentations across the ground. And then he spot ed something long and curved like a shhook on the ground. He stooped down and picked it up.
‘What’s that?’ asked Franklyn.
Liam shrugged. ‘Looks like some sort of claw.’
Franklyn couldn’t help himself. He snatched it out of Liam’s open palm.
‘Oh my God! That’s … that’s a claw, al right! Look, the serrated inner edge.’ He turned it over in his hand. ‘But it’s a weird shape, isn’t it, Mr Whitmore?’
Whitmore seemed more interested in leaving, but he quickly leaned over and inspected it more closely. ‘It’s certainly not the crescent shape you’d associate with a raptor or some other species of therapod.’
Franklyn grinned with excitement. ‘Maybe this is an unknown species?’
‘It’s possible,’ said Lam. ‘I mean, don’t they say something about we’ve only ever discovered the fossils of one per cent of the species that have ever lived on planet Earth?’
‘I real y think we should leave,’ said Whitmore. Liam nodded. He held out his hand. ‘May I have it back?’
back?’
Franklyn seemed reluctant to let it go. But after pul ing a face he passed it to Liam. ‘Cool nd,’ he ut ered. Liam smiled. ‘I’m sure you’l come across another.’
‘Yeah, probably … whatever that belonged to is smal . Probably pack hunters.’
‘Pack hunters?’ Jonah straightened up. ‘You know, I think Mr Whitmore’s right. Maybe we should go.’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Whitmore, smiling quickly,
uncomfortably. Looking around the clearing. ‘Wel , Franklyn, a fascinating nd. We can al talk about it on the way back.’
‘Pack hunters?’ said Lam. ‘Like raptors? You said there weren’t raptors!’
‘These aren’t. Look at the footprints … there’d be indentations from their sickle toe. No, these are some other species, maybe not even therapods. Something entirely di erent.’ He stood up. ‘This is so cool!’
‘Yes, wel …’ Liam looked at the others. ‘So now we know for sure we’re sharing this place with dinosaurs.’ He looked at the bu alo-sized carcass. ‘And now that we know there’s some bigger types we could hunt for food I think Mr Whitmore’s right – we ought to head back to the camp.’
Four heads bobbed enthusiastical y.
Franklyn sighed. ‘OK.’
‘Right, then.’ Liam gestured down the path they’d beaten. ‘After you, gents.’ They led quickly past him, Whitmore glancing awkwardly back over his shoulder as Whitmore glancing awkwardly back over his shoulder as he stepped by. ‘Actual y, I real y wish we hadn’t spot ed that,’ he said quietly, pul ing a face.
Liam knew what he meant. The poor beast, whatever it had once been, looked like it hadn’t just been kil ed for meat. The organs splayed out on to the jungle oor, the intestines dangling from loops of vine … it was as if the creatures that had brought it down had frolicked and played with the grisly remains – a gory celebration of the kil . The idea of an animal species capable of celebrating seemed somewhat disconcerting. It hinted at ritual. It hinted at intel igence.
Maybe they’re just messy eaters?
In the gathering stil ness, he thought he heard the softest click – like the tiniest twig snapping beneath impatient, shifting weight. He glanced back once more at the bloodsplashed clearing and wondered if predators’ eyes were cautiously eyeing him in turn from the cover of the dense green foliage.
Yel ow, unblinking eyes studied the curious creatures as they departed. Just a dozen yards away – no more than three or four strides from where the beast crouched – there were ve of these pale creatures the like of which he had never seen before. They made odd noises, not a mil ion miles away from the cranial bark he made when cal ing for the at ention of the rest of the pack. And these odd creatures moved in a not dissimilar way: upright, on long, developed rear legs, but far more slowly, sluggishly. developed rear legs, but far more slowly, sluggishly. The creature shifted position slightly, bobbing down lower to get a bet er look between the broad leaves of the fern he was hiding behind. These pale upright things, these new creatures … he wondered if this was the entirety of their pack, or whether there were more of them elsewhere.
They seemed harmless. They appeared to have no visible teeth, no slashing claws, nothing that signal ed any danger about them at al . Nothing that identi ed them as potential rival predators.
Except … except – the creature could see this – these pale things were clever. They appeared to work cooperatively, sharing tasks. Just like his pack did. He watched in absolute stil ness, his olive skin a perfect disguise among the varied greens of the jungle. He watched with intense eyes that faced forward, capable of binocular vision; capable of judging distance, range. A predator’s advantage.
These strange newcomers, these new creatures, also had eyes that faced forward. Another reason to be so very wary of them. Perhaps they too were predators of some kind, unlike the docile plant-eaters, whose eyes on either side of their heads were designed to detect potential danger from two directions.
Yes … these things had predators’ eyes. And yet they appeared ut erly defenceless, harmless and pitiful y slow and clumsy in the way they moved around the clearing. He cocked his head curiously. The long shhook-shaped He cocked his head curiously. The long shhook-shaped razor-sharp claws on its left front paw clacked together carelessly.
The last of the new creatures suddenly turned and looked back in his direction. It must have heard something, the snick of his claws. Incredibly the creature’s eyes looked directly at him – right at him – and yet seemed to see absolutely nothing. Its eyes panned slowly from left to right then nal y it turned and headed o after the others. The creature looked down at his claws: four of them, long and lethal, curled from the digits of one arm, three …
and a broken stump … from the other – damage caused many seasons ago ghting o a young male who had foolishly decided to chal enge his leadership. The chal enger had died, of course, and in a rage he had torn the body to ragged pieces in front of the rest of the pack as a lesson.
The claws usual y grew back. The young female who’d lost her claw today during the kil , she would have a new one before a new moon. But his stump had never regrown a claw. A constant reminder that his days as leader were numbered by how long he remained e ective.
Slowly and very lightly, Broken Claw stepped backwards, away from the fern leaves and further from the wel -lit smal clearing into jungle darkness. His powerful rear legs strong and agile – capable of incredible speed, but also able to move in almost complete silence. A simple thought passed through his mind – a thought not made up of words, but ideas.
not made up of words, but ideas.
The new creatures must be watched.
Instinctively he sensed there was something terribly dangerous about them. Until he knew exactly what it was, until he knew how weak or dangerous they could be, the new creatures should be careful y observed, studied, until he was sure he had the measure of them and then … then, when these things were least prepared, when they were certain these pale creatures had no concealed powers, they would be at acked and feasted upon. And the pack could celebrate their dominance once more as the quiet kil ers of this world, decorating the jungle with their organs, painting their blood on their hides.
His sharp teeth snapped together softly, and he resolved that patience, for the moment, was the correct course of action.
CHAPTER 29
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Liam heaved a sigh of relief as he caught a glimpse of the raging river and the long slender trunk that bridged one rocky bank to the other. It appeared Becks had nished her work on the bridge. It could now be raised, courtesy of a crudely rigged counterweight of a bundle of logs. They were tied together and connected to a stout rope of a dozen twisted vines, which ran up and over the thick branch of a canopy tree that stretched a sturdy limb out above the river. The other end of the rope was tied round the end of their ‘drawbridge’, a thirty-foot trunk as straight as a javelin and a slender foot in diameter. It was thick enough to take their weight, one at a time, but not so heavy the supporting branch above would snap as it was raised.
One by one, they stepped on to the log, and cautiously inched their way over the tumbling froth a few feet below. Liam was the last one over and, as he anxiously awaited his turn, he scanned the wal of jungle behind him, wary that, being the last one on this side of the river, he might prove a tempting morsel for some hungry beast. But his turn came, and a few moments later he was on the far side with the others. ‘OK, let’s raise the drawbridge.’
the far side with the others. ‘OK, let’s raise the drawbridge.’
Between them they pul ed on the counterweight of logs, and with the creak of stressed vine rope and the branch above taking the burden, the bridge rose up until it was approximately at an angle of forty-ve degrees.
‘Good enough.’ Liam looked up at the sky. The sun was beginning to head for the horizon and long dark shadows stretched across the river. Through the trees and tufts of bamboo thickets on their side of the river, from the direction of the clearing, they could hear the echoing hack of blades on wood: the others working on their camp, their home … a temporary home, Liam found himself hoping. The sound of activity was reassuring.
‘I hope somebody’s got the ket le on for us,’ said Liam. A minute later they were just stepping out into the broad clearing, keen to see what the others had managed to construct in their absence, when they heard a scream echo across the open space.
‘Uh?’ ut ered Lam.
On the far side Liam could see movement. Someone running. It was the girl Laura, running, staggering, stumbling to her knees, then back up on her feet. Behind her, pursuing with a swift purposeful stride, a gure al in black with aming red hair: Becks.
‘Whoa … cat ght,’ ut ered Jonah, grinning like an idiot.
‘Hey!’ Liam cal ed out. ‘What’s going on?’
Laura glanced his way and changed direction towards him. Becks was swiftly closing the gap. He noticed her holding one of their bamboo spears in one hand, the tip holding one of their bamboo spears in one hand, the tip bright red with a splash of blood.
What the …?
He ran forward. ‘Becks! What’s going on?’
Closer now, he could see a long gash down Laura’s left arm, blood splat ered across her bright pink sweatshirt.
‘Oh God! Oh God! She’s trying to kil me!’ Laura screamed. The rest of the group on the far side of the clearing, where a row of simple frames of wood had thus far been erected, were watching the scene in stunned, uncomprehending silence.
Final y Laura col apsed in a pile at Liam’s feet, clasping at her arm and looking back in panic as Becks strode forward. ‘She speared me!’ gasped Laura. ‘Just walked up and stabbed me for no reason!’
Becks came to a halt several yards away and looked calmly at Liam. She even smiled her faltering horse smile, lips slowly stretching to reveal a row of perfect teeth.
‘Hel o, Liam,’ she said.
‘Jay-zus, Becks! Why’d you go and at ack the poor girl?’
‘Mission priority. She has to be terminated.’
‘What?’
Becks nodded at the others standing just behind Liam.
‘Al of them as wel . The others, and you, Liam.’ He thought he detected a hint of regret in her voice as she said that. ‘After that, I must purge this area of evidence of human occupation. Then I must self-terminate.’
‘What? That’s crazy!’ said Lam.
‘Becks, listen,’ said Liam, spreading his hands slowly.
‘Becks, listen,’ said Liam, spreading his hands slowly.
‘This is not necessary, al right?’
She took another two strides forward, reached down and grabbed Laura round the throat, and e ortlessly lifted her up o the ground, her legs kicking in the air. Laura scrabbled and scratched at her face, one hand nal y grabbing a st of Becks’s red hair.
‘BECKS! STOP IT!’
Liam’s command halted her. She looked at him, confused. ‘It is a mission priority. We have already caused unacceptable levels of time contamination.’
‘PUT HER DOWN!’
Becks stared at him, but remained poised and perfectly stil , Laura stil dangling, kicking, struggling and slowly choking; the sharp ragged point of the spear held in Becks’s other hand hovered mere inches away from her throat.
‘THAT IS AN ORDER!’
Becks’s eyes slowly panned from Liam to Laura then back again. Her eyelids ut ered momentarily then nal y she said, ‘A rmative.’ She released her grip on Laura and the girl tumbled heavily to the ground, Becks’s red wig wrenched from her bare head, stil clasped by Laura’s bloody ngers.
‘Now, put that spear down!’ snapped Liam.
She obediently released her tight grip and it clat ered on the soft ground.
Laura’s breath chugged in and out in whooping gasps while the others stared in stunned silence at Becks and her while the others stared in stunned silence at Becks and her bald head, already sporting a quarter-inch fuzz of dark hair.‘Oh my God! She’s a complete freakin’ psycho!’ said Lam.
Behind him, Liam heard Jonah mut er, ‘Jeez … got that right, dude.’
Becks was staring at him. There was something in those cold grey eyes, something that looked like guilt, regret. Possibly even sadness. Like a scolded baby in that moment
– that stunned could go either way moment – just before the face creases up and the tears and wailing come.
‘No,’ said Liam, ‘no, she’s not.’
‘She’s not a psycho?’ said Lam. ‘Sure about that?’
Liam nodded. He could see muscles twitching in Becks’s face. Confusion, desperation … her mind struggling to reconcile con icting priorities: Liam’s direct order versus hard-coded mission protocols.
‘She’s just doing what she thinks is right. She’s fol owing her programming.’
Franklyn cocked his head. ‘Programming?’
The re crackled noisily, il uminating their faces as they gathered in a circle round it like so many amber-coloured ghosts in a graveyard. The jungle, beyond the thrown ickering glow of light, was dark and noisy with the faro echoing cries of creatures cal ing to each other.
‘But how can we be sure that … thing won’t just freak out on us again?’ asked Kel y. He cast a glance at Becks out on us again?’ asked Kel y. He cast a glance at Becks standing several dozen yards away out in the darkness, motionless, dutiful y keeping watch for any signs of a night predator entering the clearing.
‘She just won’t,’ said Liam.
‘Yeah, wel , that doesn’t exactly l me with con dence.’
Kel y threw a smal branch on the re, sending a cascade of sparks up into the pitch-black sky. ‘I mean, it’s not like you knew she was going to at ack Laura earlier.’
Liam looked at the girl. Her arm was bandaged with a strip of cloth torn from her sleeve. The black girl, Keisha, had done a good job with the dressing. It hadn’t been a particularly deep gash, but luckily hadn’t severed an artery. Laura must have been incredibly lucky; Becks had stumbled on the uneven ground as she’d lunged with the spear. Laura had been fortunate Becks hadn’t managed to get hold of her. Liam had seen enough of Bob in action to know that, male or female, these support units were lethal kil ing machines up close and personal.
‘She won’t,’ said Liam again. ‘I’ve discussed the situation with her.’
‘Discussed the situation?’ snorted Jonah. ‘Can’t you just pul some sort of plug on her? I mean … she’s a robot, right?’
‘No.’ Liam shook his head. ‘She’s not that sort of a robot. Not al wires and motors and metal bits. She’s an organic unit, what the agency cal a genetical y engineered unit.’ He looked around at the pale faces. ‘You’ve heard of that term, have you?’
that term, have you?’
‘Wel , duh,’ sighed Keisha. ‘Any kid who watches the Cartoon Channel knows that term.’
Liam shrugged apologetical y. ‘Anyway, she’s what we cal a meat robot. Flesh and blood, so she is. But she has a real computer up in her head.’
‘And what? You sayin’ her programmin’ made her go for Laura with the spear?’ said Juan.
‘That’s right. She was concerned about al the contamination we were causing, and without me being there to discuss it with her she had to make a decision on her own.’
‘Concerned?’ said Jonah ‘Concerned? Dude, I’d hate to see what she’s like when she’s real y mad at something.’
Liam ignored that.
‘Liam, you said contamination,’ said Kel y. ‘You mean, creating evidence we’ve been here? Like our camp and the bridge?’
‘That’s right. Every cut, every scrape, every footprint – in fact, everything we do – just our being here could potential y alter history in such a way that the future is total y destroyed.’ Liam glanced at the motionless silhouet e of the support unit standing guard in the middle of the clearing. ‘It’s a basic command for her … like, I suppose, like one of the ten commandments would be to us.’‘Thou shalt not mess around with time,’ chuckled a dark-skinned boy cal ed Ranjit. ‘That would be a cool eleventh commandment to have.’
eleventh commandment to have.’
‘Yeah,’ said Jonah. ‘Thy shalt not kil your ancestor, for he begets –’
‘You think it’s funny?’ cut in Howard sharply. The others looked at him, taken aback at the outburst. Thus far he’d been one of the quieter members of the group. ‘You think messing with time is just some sort of a game? It’s the most insane thing man has ever done.’ He stopped himself short. Took a breath and dial ed it back a bit.
‘What I’m saying is … it’s just pret y insane, time travel.’
Liam nodded sombrely. ‘He’s quite right. It is insane. Although a man cal ed Waldstein is the rst man to travel through time –’ he looked at Edward, the smal est face around the re – ‘it al begins with you. It’s al based on work that you wil do one day.’
‘So … theoretical y,’ said Kel y, ‘if Edward had, for example, died in that explosion back in the reactor, and not gone on to do his work, then this Waldstein guy would not have invented a time machine?’
‘And we’d not have been blasted back into dinosaur times?’ said Laura.
Liam noticed one or two heads turning towards the young boy, giving him a long, silent stare that looked like careful deliberation. Liam could see where this conversation might go.
‘There can only be one correct history, one correct timeline. And, whether we like it or not, that timeline includes an Edward Chan who becomes a maths genius, and a Mr Waldstein who makes that rst machine, so he and a Mr Waldstein who makes that rst machine, so he does. That’s how it goes. That’s how it has to go.’ Liam stared at them al , each in turn. ‘And that’s why you can trust me … why you can trust Becks, to be sure. Our primary goal now is to make sure that this young lad gets back home to 2015 to do what he has to do. And that means the rest of you too.’
‘So, if there’s, like, a primary goal … then there’s a secondary goal,’ said a dark-skinned girl with long black hair and a pierced upper lip that glinted with several metal studs. It was the rst time he’d heard her speak today. Quiet, pensive, she reminded him a lit le of Sal. She was stil wearing her name tag: JASMINE.
‘There’s no other goal, Jasmine, I promise,’ said Liam.
‘Me and Becks want to get you al back home, so we do.’
But that’s not strictly true, is it, Liam?
He and Becks had spoken in private earlier. He’d managed to reason with her calmly – to talk her down from proceeding any further with her self-decided mission objective to kil them al , then herself. But it was a compromise. A perfectly logical compromise that successful y reconciled the con icting protocols in her head.
‘In six months’ time,’ he’d agreed with her, ‘if they haven’t rescued us by then, before your six months is up and you have to self-terminate … then, yes, you’re right …
I suppose we’d al have to die. I’l even help you.’ He’d smiled at her. ‘Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that, eh?’
The camp re crackled noisily.
The camp re crackled noisily.
‘So, there you go, al friends now, right?’ said Jonah.
‘Even robo-girl.’ He grinned. ‘Now about a nice sing-song. A round of “Kumbayah”?’ he added sarcastical y. ‘I’l take the lead. Kumbayah, my Lord! … Kumba–’
Someone threw a chip of dried dino dung across the re at him.
CHAPTER 30
Wednesday, 2001, New York
A Wednesday. Maddy realized she hadn’t seen one of those in quite a while. Since she’d been on a plane trip back home to her folks in Boston, in fact. Since she’d become a TimeRider.
She looked down the agpole approach to the Statue of Liberty’s star-shaped podium and spot ed only half a dozen other people. She’d been here once before, on the same school trip that they’d visited the Museum of Natural History. It had been a tedious day ful of queuing. Queuing to get ferry tickets, queuing to get on a ferry over to Liberty Island, queuing to get inside the podium building beneath Liberty’s feet and look at the smal museum’s exhibits. Queuing once again to get a look up inside the statue itself. A pret y dul day of standing around, being shoved, bumped and barged into, waiting to look at things she actual y had precious lit le interest in. Today though there were no queues.
The island was al but deserted. Half a dozen ferries had arrived throughout the day, each o oading no more than a handful of muted whispering visitors. And, even then, their eyes had been more on the column of smoke coming from across the bay, coming from Manhat an, than they had across the bay, coming from Manhat an, than they had been on the giant copper-green statue in front of them. Maddy took another slurp of the cooling polystyrene cup of co ee in her hands. Horrible. She’d lost count of how many she’d bought from the stal opposite the embarkation pier. She was almost on rst-name terms with the bewildered-looking man behind the counter who’d served her every time. He certainly should know by now she took it white with three sugars.
Come on, Foster … where the hel are you?
Through the morning she’d been hopeful as each ferry had arrived. But not now; it was nearly four in the afternoon. Another hour or so and the Statue of Liberty’s lit le museum would be closing, the last ferry back across the harbour get ing ready to leave.
She was beginning to realize today had been wasted, loitering around like this. Cluelessly hovering around the podium’s entrance in hope that the old man would turn up. Never mind, she told herself, now at least she knew that Foster hadn’t spent the rst Wednesday of his
‘retirement’ out here. She’d head back to their archway. Today, Wednesday, it would be nothing more than an empty brick archway with a TO LET sign pasted on the rol er-shut er door, and outside that shut er door she’d wait until eight in the evening when a shimmering portal would appear, ready to take her back into Monday again. Then she’d do this al again, try Wednesday once more, but next time she’d loiter outside the Empire State Building.
Building.
Her eyes drifted o the tourists as they passed by her and into the podium, pausing as they did to look once again at the pal of smoke in the sky.
She remembered this day, remembered the day after. She’d been what? Eight? Nine? Mom and Dad at home al day, sit ing in front of the TV, watching as dust-smeared emergency workers scrabbled at the edge of the smouldering wreck, pul ing twisted spars of stil -warm metal away in the hope of nding someone alive. She’d been playing on the oor of the lounge with her TechMeccano set, trying to build her version of a Transformer, half her at ention on what she was doing, half on her parents: Mom sobbing and Dad cursing.
And here she was again. Di erent place, same day. An odd urge occurred to her. What if she found a way through the security cordon around the ruin of the Twin Towers and found a TV camera and reporter to be stopped and interviewed by. She could wave at her eight-year-old self, wave at her mom and dad watching the TV. She could reassure them that she wasn’t going to die along with 137
other people aboard Flight 95 in nine years’ time. Tel them she was going to be OK.
She shook her head. Nice idea. But she wasn’t going to do that.
She turned her thoughts towards more pressing mat ers. Liam and the support unit. Bob had assured her that the copy of his AI in the female unit would make the same recommendation to Liam as he would: to nd a discreet recommendation to Liam as he would: to nd a discreet way to make contact. Discreet … because a too-obvious message, a message that stood out above the background noise of history, could signi cantly a ect the timeline. But there was the problem. A subtle message careful y laid down in whatever historical period they were in, laid down for only her and Sal to nd …?
I mean, where the hel are we supposed to start looking for something like that?
If they’d only been bumped back less than 150 years, then perhaps there was a message waiting for them once more in the Museum of Natural History’s guest books. That was something Sal had decided to try and check out. But what if they’d been knocked further back in time?
Five hundred years ago? A thousand years ago? What was in the middle of Texas a thousand years ago? A lot of bu alo, she guessed, and some Indians. But certainly no visitor guest books for them to discreetly slip a message into. A ‘get us out of here’ scrawled across an ancient Navaho tribal history rug was almost certainly something the support unit would NOT recommend to Liam. Not unless they wanted every historian studying Native American history discussing the message at some symposium.
Subtle. It could only be subtle.
But, she sighed to herself, too subtle and how were they ever going to nd it?
Unless it’s a message that’s meant to nd us. She looked up from her co ee.
She looked up from her co ee.
… Find us …
‘My God,’ she whispered to herself. Maybe that’s what they’d try to do. A message addressed to its nder, whomever that might be. A message that perhaps might promise a reward of some kind to the nder provided it was delivered to a certain location on a certain date. A message that might promise untold wealth, access to an incredible time-travel technology? And think about it. Such a message would be too important, too powerful, to become public knowledge, wouldn’t it? A message like that would become a closely guarded secret, right? A secret handed down by the original nder to his o spring, like a dark family secret or a horrendous supernatural curse. Handed down from one to another, until nal y the message is passed to someone who is able to make their way to a certain backstreet in Brooklyn on 10 September 2001 and gently knock on their door, cal ing out to see if anyone’s inside.
Oh my God … it’s possible, isn’t it?
And what if that happened while she was standing out here like a complete lemon? Waiting for Foster to turn up, when quite probably he was never going to. Computer Bob was right. That’s what he’d said, wasn’t it? ‘Just wait.’
‘Oh, you freakin’ idiot, Maddy,’ she hissed to herself, tossing the polystyrene cup into the bin beside her and heading down the walkway towards the pier.
CHAPTER 31
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
‘You can do what?’ said Liam.
Becks hefted the log up in her taut arms and held it steady as Liam lashed it in place with a hand-woven length of rope made from the species of vine they’d found dangling from virtual y every tree around the clearing.
‘I believe it is possible for me to calculate when in time we are with a very high degree of accuracy.’
He wrapped the rope tightly round the log, tugging it hard so that it shu ed up against its neighbour. The palisade wal so far stretched only a dozen feet: about twenty logs, each just under eight inches in diameter and al roughly about nine feet tal . When they were done, they’d have a circular enclosure about four yards across –
large enough for al sixteen of them to huddle inside should something nasty nd its way on to their island and they needed somewhere to retreat to.
‘How?’ asked Liam.
‘I have a detailed record of al the variables during the time of the explosion.’
‘Variables?’
‘Data. Speci cal y, directly after we arrived here. The particle decay rate.’
particle decay rate.’
Liam cocked an eyebrow. ‘I haven’t a clue what that means, Becks.’
She walked over to a dwindling pile of logs and e ortlessly picked up another. They were going to need more. Across the clearing he could see Whitmore and several of the students carrying one between them, stumbling across the lumpy ground towards them. She slammed one end of the log down into the soft soil with a heavy thud, next to the last log, and Liam began to lash it into their wal .
‘I have a detailed record of the explosion. The number and density of tachyon particles that we were exposed to in 2015 and the number and density of tachyon particles that emerged here alongside ourselves.’
Liam looked at her and shrugged. ‘Assume I’m a child that knows nothing, Becks.’
She looked at him and he thought he caught her rol ing her eyes at his stupidity: a gesture the AI must have learned from Sal back when it was computer-bound and its visual world was what it picked up from the one webcam.
‘Tachyon particles decay at a constant rate. That is why it takes greater amounts of energy to beam a signal further into the past.’
Liam tugged hard on the vine rope, cinching the knot tightly. ‘I get that. So, if these particles die out at a steady rate, that means …?’
‘I am able to calculate how many particles decayed and, from that, determine how far in time we were sent.’
from that, determine how far in time we were sent.’
He grinned. ‘Real y? You can do that?’
Becks looked up and tried mimicking his uneven smile.
‘I have the processing power to do this.’
‘And we’l know exactly when we are?’
‘To an accuracy level of one thousandth of a per cent.’
Liam shook his head in wonder. ‘Jay-zus, that metal brain of yours is a bloody marvel, so it is!’
She seemed pleased with that. ‘Is that a compliment, Liam O’Connor?’
He punched her arm lightly. ‘Of course it is! Don’t know what I’d do without you.’
Her gaze drifted o across the clearing for a moment then back at him. ‘Thank you.’
He nished lashing the log and waited for her to pick up another and slam it down heavily beside the last one.
‘So what? We’l actual y know what day we arrived in the past? Even what time?’
‘Negative. I am unable to give that precise a calculation.
’ ‘OK. We’l know to the nearest week or something?’
She shook her head.
‘The nearest month?’
‘Negative.’
‘Year?’
‘I can calculate to the nearest thousand years.’
‘What?’
‘I can calculate our current time down to the nearest –’
He cut her o . ‘I heard you the rst time. But … but He cut her o . ‘I heard you the rst time. But … but that’s no good to us, is it? I mean, even if we could somehow get a message to the future and tel them which thousandth year we’re in, nding us here would be like trying to nd a needle in a haystack!’ He slumped down against the wal . ‘If they tried opening a window at the same time every day for every year for a thousand years that’d be … that’d be …’
‘Three hundred and sixty-ve thousand at empts,’ said Becks. ‘Add another two hundred and fty at empts for leap years.’
‘Right! That many. Jeeeez, they’d never nd us!’
She squat ed down on her haunches beside him. ‘You are correct. It is extremely unlikely,’ she con rmed.
‘So that’s it, then?’ he said, sagging. The moment of believing they might have the beginnings of a way out was gone now, leaving him feeling even more hopeless than before. ‘We’re stuck here.’
‘Until my six-month mission timer reaches –’
‘Yes, yes … I know. Then you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.’
A hand reached out and gently grasped his arm. ‘I am sorry, Liam O’Connor. It does not make me happy to think of terminating these humans. Particularly you.’
He sighed. ‘Wel … I s’pose that counts for something,’
he mut ered. ‘Thanks.’
They watched as the others nal y arrived with the log, and between them heaved it on to the ground. Whitmore wiped sweat from his forehead and recovered his breath. wiped sweat from his forehead and recovered his breath.
‘Good God, I’m beat. Roughly how many more of these logs do you think you’re going to need to nish that?’
Becks turned and eyed the wal for a moment. ‘Seventynine.’
He pu ed out his cheeks. ‘Seventy-nine? You sure?’
She nodded. ‘I am sure.’
‘Right,’ Whitmore pu ed. ‘Right, come on then, you lot,’
he said to the others. ‘Back to work.’
Liam and Becks watched them go. ‘It would be possible for the eld o ce to narrow down the number of candidate windows,’ said Becks.
‘What?’
‘They do not need to try opening three hundred and sixty-ve thousand, two hundred and fty windows. I am certain the AI back in the eld o ce would make the same recommendation.’
‘Same recommendation? What?’
‘A density probe. They could at empt a brief scan of each day. Any scans that returned a varying density signal warning would indicate movement of some object at that location. It is possible they would consider density warning signals as best-case candidates.’
He looked at her. She was right. A routine protocol before opening a window, to make sure they weren’t going to get mangled up with somebody else. ‘Do you remember exactly where we appeared on this clearing?’
She nodded. ‘I have the exact geo-coordinates logged in my database.’ She pointed across the ground towards a my database.’ She pointed across the ground towards a cluster of ferns. ‘You appeared there. Fifty-one feet, seven and three-quarter inches from this location.’
‘Then –’ Liam looked at the spot – ‘we’d need to stand someone right there … apping their arms around or something, right?’
‘Correct. But it is unlikely the eld o ce wil be making probe sweeps this far back in time.’
Liam felt himself sagging again. Another dashed ray of hope. He bal ed a st with frustration. ‘This time-travel stu is nonsense. Would it be so hard for the agency to come up with some beamy signal thing we could send back to them?’
‘In theory it would be possible. But it would require an enormous amount of energy and of course time displacement machinery, and a sophisticated enough computer system to target where to aim a –’
He raised a hand to shush her. ‘Becks?’
Her grey eyes locked on him obediently.
‘Please, shut up.’
‘A rmative.’
He stood, stretching an aching back. ‘Ah, sod this!’ Then he suddenly snapped, slamming his st against the log wal . The palisade vibrated slightly with the soft creak of stretched vine-rope.
‘Ouch!’ he mut ered, and sucked on grazed knuckles.
‘That hurt.’
She tilted her head, curious. ‘Then why did you do that?
’
’ ‘Ugh … wil you not be quiet?’
CHAPTER 32
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Several of the new creatures were standing in the shal ows of the raging river, frothing white water tumbling noisily around their legs. They al held long sticks in their hands and seemed to be studying the water intently, keeping motionless for long periods then nal y, inexplicably, lashing out with their sticks.
Broken Claw turned to the others crouching a few yards away, watching these creatures with fascination. He snicked his claws to at ract their at ention. They al obediently looked his way. Broken Claw ut ered a series of soft throaty barks, and snapped his teeth.
New creatures. They are dangerous.
He couldn’t explain why – he just knew somehow that they were. Quite possibly far more dangerous than them. His yel ow eyes swivel ed back to the creatures, and across the far side to the curious contraption these things had been fashioning with their pale clawless arms. The long trunk of a tree stripped of branches and leaves and hanging at a raised angle over the river, just like the longslanted neck of one of the giant leaf-eaters that lived on the open plain. Tied round the contraption’s top, Broken Claw recognized vines, entwined together, taut and angling Claw recognized vines, entwined together, taut and angling back up towards another tree, over a thick branch and dangling straight down to the ground, where the vines were wrapped round a cluster of logs.
He couldn’t begin to understand what the contraption did, or why these things had laboured so hard on making it. But they had, and it worried him. That he himself couldn’t understand what it did worried him. He barked again softly.
New creatures. Cleverer than us.
The others seemed to agree. They cowered lower among the foliage at the edge of the jungle. He could see as many of them wading in the water as the number of claws he possessed. He wondered how many more of them were on the island on the far side of this narrow river. More than his pack?
Just then, one of the new creatures lurched forward, pushing the stick into the water. A moment later it pul ed the stick out. On its end, one of the grey river creatures thrashed and struggled, silver and glistening. The stick had somehow captured the creature. The stick … captures … the river creature.
He watched with fascination as the new creatures carried the large apping river-dwel er between them, away from the water’s edge and through the trees until they were gone from view. Only one of them remained behind. Stil , poised, gazing intently out at the water. Broken Claw recognized this one. He’d seen him before three sun-rises ago, back in the jungle. Their stare had three sun-rises ago, back in the jungle. Their stare had actual y met for a moment, although the thing’s pale blue eyes had seemed to register nothing of that. Broken Claw sensed this one led the others, just like he led his pack. A position of loneliness and responsibility. For a moment his animal mind processed a thought that a human might have cal ed kinship.
New creature. Is like I. Leads others.
When the time came to kil them al , when he was sure it was safe for them to make their move, he decided this creature should be his and his alone. Perhaps in the moment that he tore this pale thing’s heart out al the wisdom and intel igence inside it would become his. Then he too would understand the stick that captures … and the curious construction raised over the river.
Liam scanned the swirling suds of water in front of him. Every now and then he could see the dark outline of one of these large prehistoric mud sh darting around the shal ows, teasing him to make a lunge at it with his spear. He was useless at it, unable to anticipate which way the dark shape would lurch to avoid being skewered. Juan was probably the best among them at catching these things. The one he’d just caught was a whopper: four feet of wriggling wet meat, enough to feed at least half of them tonight. If he could just manage to bag another one himself while the others were carrying it back to the camp, then he could at least feel less like a useless jerk. Some leader.
Some leader.
Franklyn seemed to know everything about dinosaurs, Whitmore quite a lot too. Juan seemed to be at home in this survival situation, good at hunting, building a re and al . Keisha seemed to be the group’s carer and doctor. And, despite the unfortunate incident a few days ago, the others were beginning to regard Becks as their bodyguard. Even Jonah seemed to have a valued role as the group’s comedian.
And then there’s me. The Irish kid who can do nothing more than keep saying ‘help’s on the way’.
He wondered if the only reason they’d accepted him as the nominal leader was because he’d made the rash promise to get them back home. That and, of course, because Becks took her orders only from him. He wondered how they were going to feel about him being in charge in a few weeks’ time or months’ time, when there was stil no sign of rescue.
He felt lonely and worn out with the burden of responsibility. At least the last time he’d been stuck in the past it had just been himself to worry about; he hadn’t been asked to lead anyone.
No, that was Bob’s job. He laughed at the memory of Bob leading that army of freedom ghters. They’d thought he was some sort of warrior angel sent down from Heaven by God himself; they’d thought he was a superhero just like out of one of those comicbooks. Superman, Captain Freedom. He’d certainly looked the part.
Movement.
Movement.
He looked up and saw a pack of smal dinosaurs, lit le more than lizards, standing upright on their hind legs and gazing at him curiously. None bigger than his hand. They were standing only a couple of yards away and tweeted and twit ered among themselves as they idly watched him. Franklyn had a species name for them, although Liam was damned if he could remember it.
‘What do you fel as want?’ he cal ed out.
He could guess … begging for scraps. These lit le chaps had been hopping and skipping around their camp re last night like excited children, drawn by the smel of sh meat being gril ed on a spit. One of them had even been bold enough to hop up on to the cooking carcass, but had slipped on the greasy scales of the sh and fal en into the re, where it had apped around and screamed for a while before nal y succumbing to the ames.
‘Did you not learn your lesson last night, you sil y eejits? Best staying away, eh?’
They al cocked their heads to the right in unison at the sound of his voice.
‘Jay-zus, you lit le fel as real y are stupid, aren’t you?’
They tweeted and twit ered and cooed at that.
‘Ah, go away, wil you? You’l spook my sh, so you wil .’ Liam bent down, scooped up a rock and tossed it a dozen yards down the silted riverbank. The entire pack of mini-therapods turned and scooted after it excitedly, presumably ut erly convinced it was a hunk of juicy meat. Liam watched them go, pat ering across the silt, leaving Liam watched them go, pat ering across the silt, leaving a host of tiny trails behind them, like the trail of winter birds across virgin snow.
And that’s when the idea struck him.
‘Oh … oh,’ he gasped to himself. ‘Oh Jay-zus-’n’-MotherMary,’ he added for good measure. ‘That’l be it!’ He dropped his spear into the water and turned on his heels, heading through the trees towards the camp.
CHAPTER 33
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
He stumbled out of the jungle and into the clearing. Across the way he could see a thin column of smoke from yesterday’s camp re, stil smouldering, and clustered around it their dozen wigwam shelters, cone-shaped frames of wood beneath layers of broad waxy leaves the size of elephant’s ears. To one side their palisade, nished now, and reinforced with a coating of rust-coloured dried mud, packed into the spaces between the logs and almost as hard as concrete. Around the tree-trunk palisade wal a three-foot-deep trench had been dug out. It e ectively added another two or three feet to the height of their defence. Liam very much doubted it would hold at bay something as large as a rex, but it might be enough to dissuade any smal er beasts on the hunt for an easy meal. He picked out Becks among the gures moving around the camp: a gure in black, her head no longer a pale round eggshel , but dark now with a week’s worth of hair growth.
‘Becks!’ he cal ed out. Her head turned sharply towards him, and her posture instantly adjusted to one ready for action. Every other head turned his way as he stumbled awkwardly across the ground towards them.
awkwardly across the ground towards them.
He saw Juan and Leonard scrambling to their feet and reaching for spears. He realized his voice must have sounded shril as if he was shouting a warning. Kel y reached into his trousers for his penknife, Whitmore for one of their hatchets.
By the time Liam arrived beside the camp re, breathless and sweating from the exertion, everybody stood poised with a weapon and ready to run for the safety of the palisade.
‘What is it?’ asked Kel y. ‘Something coming?’
Liam looked at them al . They were wide-eyed, some of the girls terri ed even. Glances skipped from Liam to the far side of the clearing from where he’d emerged sprinting as if the devil himself was in hot pursuit.
‘What’s happened, dude?’ asked Jonah.
Becks said, ‘Your voice indicated a threat.’
Liam shook his head. ‘Ah no, not real y. I just had an idea.’
‘Fossils, that’s what you’re talking about,’ said Franklyn.
‘Fossils. They’re not even the original print that’s left behind, but just an imprint of the print: sediment that has l ed the footprint, then hardened over thousands of years to become a layer of rock.’
‘Yes, but it’s stil a mark that’s survived through al that time. An impression of that original mark.’
‘Of course,’ sni ed Franklyn. ‘Yes, of course that’s exactly what it is.’
exactly what it is.’
Kel y shook his head. ‘That’s it? That’s how you intend to communicate with your agency? Leave a mark on the ground in the Cretaceous period and hope some lucky fossil hunter nds it?’ He shrugged, exasperated. ‘Oh, great
…’ He gazed at the re. ‘And there was me thinking you and your robo-girl here had some sort of high-tech beacon or something to bring them here!’
Becks shook her head. ‘Negative. No beacons.’
Liam raised a hand to hush her. ‘That’s just the way it is, Mr Kel y. There’s nothing I can do about that.’
Laura bit her lip. ‘That … that doesn’t sound like much of a chance, though – a message traced in the ground surviving mil ions of years in one piece?’
‘Survivin’ that long,’ added Juan, ‘and bein’ found as wel , man. What’s the chances of that?’
Liam shrugged. ‘Maybe we can improve our chances.’
He looked at Franklyn. ‘Do we not know where the rst fossils were discovered? I mean historical y? That’s actual y known, right?’
Whitmore and Franklyn exchanged a glance. ‘Wel , yes,’
said Whitmore. ‘It’s common knowledge where the rst American dinosaur fossils were discovered.’
Franklyn nodded. ‘In Texas, of course. Right here in Texas.’ Behind his bot le-top glasses, his eyes suddenly widened. ‘Yes! Oh, hang on! Yes … Dinosaur Val ey. Right, Mr Whitmore?’
Whitmore nodded. ‘Good God, yes, you’re right, Franklyn. Near Glen Rose, Texas.’
Franklyn. Near Glen Rose, Texas.’
‘Glen Rose?’ Liam shrugged. ‘Would that be far away?’
Kel y’s scornful frozen expression of cynicism looked like it was thawing. ‘Not that far from where the TERI labs were, actual y. About sixty miles away.’
‘Dinosaur Val ey State Park,’ continued Whitmore. ‘It’s a protected area now, a national landmark. At the beginning of the 1900s, I think, some of the rst fossils were found along a riverbed there. Lots of them.’
‘The Paluxy River,’ said Franklyn, ‘where the fossils were found, was thought to be the shoreline of some Cretaceous-era sea.’
Liam looked from Whitmore to Franklyn. ‘So? We could get to this place, right? You fel as know exactly where it would be?’
Both shook their heads. ‘Not real y,’ said Whitmore.
‘How could we know that?’ He gestured around at the jungle. ‘It’s an entirely di erent landscape.’ He laughed.
‘Hel , it’s out there somewhere!’
‘I know where it is in relation to the TERI labs,’ said Kel y. The others looked at him. ‘Wel , I drive in to work from Glen Rose. It’s where I live. I pass the signs for Dinosaur Val ey Park every day on the way up to the interstate. It’s just outside Glen Rose, about a mile north of the town.’
‘I have geo-coordinates for the town of Glen Rose,’ said Becks.
Liam looked at her. ‘You do?’
‘Of course. It was part of the data package Maddy
‘Of course. It was part of the data package Maddy Carter uploaded prior to departure. I have the complete set of US Geological Survey maps for the State of Texas.’
Liam’s eyes glistened by the light of the camp re. ‘We could actual y do this!’ He looked at them al , piecing together on the y something that was beginning to resemble a plan. ‘Then, in theory, Becks, you could lead us right to this place that wil one day become this dinosaur park?’
‘A rmative.’
‘And if we know some fossil-hunting fel as nd a whole load of fossils, as you said, Mr Whitmore, sometime in the 1900s, then could we not place some fossils of our own right there?’
‘I suppose we –’
‘Negative,’ cut in Becks. She understood now where Liam was going with this. ‘That would represent a signi cant contamination risk.’
Liam clenched his teeth in frustration. ‘Come on, Becks, we have to break a few eggs, so we do.’
She cocked her head. ‘Break eggs?’
‘You know … how does it go? To make an omelet e. We leave a message to be found. So, al right, it causes a new load of contamination problems. But then we have a chance at being rescued, get ing these people back home where they should be, and then … then we go and x that lit le problem.’
‘This action introduces a third independent source of contamination.’ She looked cool y at the group gathered contamination.’ She looked cool y at the group gathered around the camp re. ‘Already there are two potential sources of time corruption. One in 2015 – the absence of Edward Chan. The second, this time, the presence of humans where there should not be any. Either or both contamination sources have a high probability of already causing signi cant time waves in the future.’
‘What if …’ started Jonah, but he almost stopped when every pair of eyes swung on to him. Clearly now wasn’t the time for some ippant wisecrack. But he continued anyway. It seemed like a smart idea to him. ‘What if …
like … we left a message that was, you know, like, too important to become common knowledge.’
They stared at him in silence. No one was tel ing him to shut up, so he elaborated. ‘I mean, like hushed up. Like, say, Roswel .’
Liam shrugged. ‘Roswel ?’
Kel y snorted a dry laugh. ‘The supposed sight of a crashed UFO in 1947. Conspiracy nuts love that story. According to them it was a real ying saucer from outer space with real live LGM onboard.’
Laura saw Liam purse his lips in confusion. ‘Lit le Green Men,’ she said helpful y.
‘Anyway,’ continued Kel y, ‘despite the fact it was most probably just a crashed test jet of some kind, you stil get nut-jobs going on about wanting to free the lit le green men from their years of medical testing and enforced imprisonment.’
Jonah made a face. ‘Yeah … but how do we know for Jonah made a face. ‘Yeah … but how do we know for sure it ain’t true, Mr Kel y, eh? Point is, it could’ve been just a test jet, it could’ve been an alien spaceship, but the world wil never know ’cause the government being, like, total y paranoid douche bags, hushed it al up. Kept the secret to themselves.’
‘Oh, come on, kid,’ said Kel y, ‘that’s a load of –’
Liam waved him silent. ‘Hang on! No, wait! Jonah has a point … I think.’ He scratched his cheek, deep in thought for a moment. ‘Look, the point is people like the government … Your American government, right, if someone, some everyday person discovered a fossil that suggested something as amazing as the invention of time travel and they told the government, what would they do?’
‘You kiddin’?’ said Juan. ‘They’d end up al over it like a rash, man. Secret service, Homeland sti s in black suits an’ dark glasses an’ stu .’
‘I’l tel you, dude. Whoever found it would end up having an unfortunate accident,’ said Jonah, looking at Kel y. ‘Always happens, like … always. In fact, anybody who knew about it, was related to somebody who knew about it, would end up dead or in Guantanamo or someplace. Either way, there wouldn’t be anyone walking around talking about it.’
‘That’s what I mean,’ said Liam. ‘It would remain a secret.’ He looked at Becks. ‘And so nothing major would be changed by it. The world wouldn’t be talking about it. The world wouldn’t know about it.’
Behind her narrowing eyes he guessed her computer Behind her narrowing eyes he guessed her computer was hard at work processing that notion. Looking for a percentage probability gure.
Whitmore nodded. ‘That’s how the intel igence agencies work, by put ing up a poker face. Give nothing away. You know something? You keep it to yourself. You know something about the enemy, say the Russians … you don’t change a thing about the way you behave. You act normal so the enemy don’t know you’ve got something on them.’
Liam nodded. ‘Exactly! Just like in the Second World War. I read something about those Enigma codes and al . And how the Americans and British couldn’t sometimes react to the German messages they’d intercepted, otherwise the Germans would have gured out they’d cracked their secret codes.’ He looked down at the muddy ground at his feet. Subconsciously the toe of his left shoe drew spirals in the dirt. ‘So I don’t know yet what kind of a message we could write. But we’d want something we know they’d have to keep secret. But, more importantly, we want a message they’d need to take directly to our eld o ce.’
‘That wil compromise the agency’s secrecy,’ warned Becks.
Liam shrugged. ‘I know … but another problem to x later, huh?’
She scowled silently at that. ‘It is another protocol con ict.’
‘So you can blame it on me when we get back,’ he said with a grin.
The group considered Liam’s plan in silence for a while The group considered Liam’s plan in silence for a while as the re crackled and hissed between them.
‘I reckon your idea sounds cool,’ said Lam. ‘I’m in.’
Liam noticed a couple of heads nod.
‘Al right, then,’ he said nal y. ‘Al right, then.’ This felt good, having something at least half-gured out, something for them al to work towards. ‘Becks, we’d need for them to know when we are, you know? As close as you can get it. So you do what maths in your head you need to do.’
She nodded slowly. ‘A rmative.’
‘And maybe we’l need some sort of device erected exactly where we landed, right? So that if –’ he corrected himself – ‘when they get our message and have an approximate time period to start density probing, we need something that’s constantly moving to and fro in that space. Creating some sort of a movement, a disturbance?’
‘Correct.’
‘You mean like a windmil or somethin’?’ asked Ranjit. Becks nodded. ‘A rmative. A device of that kind would be suitable.’
‘And we’l need to make some preparations for a long hike. Food, water, weapons, those sorts of things.’ Liam looked around at them. ‘And we’l need to leave someone behind to man the camp and lift the bridge after we’re gone.’
‘Also to maintain the density interference device. It must function constantly. Al the time,’ said Becks. Liam looked over his shoulder out towards the darkness, towards the middle of the clearing where they’d darkness, towards the middle of the clearing where they’d landed over a week ago. ‘Yes, you’re right. It’d be bad news for us if a density probe passed through here once, found nothing and moved on.’
Liam’s grin was infectious and began to spread among the others.
He looked at Becks. ‘Is this acceptable?’
She nodded slowly. ‘The plan has a low probability of success.’ She smiled, quite nicely this time. ‘But it is possible, Liam O’Connor.’
CHAPTER 34
2001, New York
Sal watched the world go by. Her world, that’s how she thought about it: Times Square, New York, eight thirty in the morning, Tuesday 11 September 2001.
She knew it so wel now. She knew everything that existed in this thoroughfare and everything that was meant to happen at this very moment in time. For instance … she looked around … and there they were: the old couple in matching jogging pants, hu ng slowly side by side; the FedEx guy with an armful of packages, dropping one of them on the pavement and looking around to see whether anyone had noticed his ham stedness; two blonde girls sharing headphones and giggling at something they were listening to.
Sal smiled.
Al normal so far.
And there was the ustered-looking huddle of Japanese tourists standing outside TGI Friday’s on the corner of 192
West and 46th Street, ipping anxiously through their phrase books to work out how to ask for a co ee and saltbeef and mustard bagels times nine. Her eyes drifted up to the bil boards overlooking Times Square; there was Shrek and Donkey, Mikey and Sul y. Square; there was Shrek and Donkey, Mikey and Sul y. There was the bil board for Mamma Mia … and walking slowly up the pavement towards her favourite bench, checking in every bin along the way and pushing a loaded shopping trol ey in front of him, was the cheerful old tramp she saw this time every morning.
She sni ed the warm morning air; it smel ed of car fumes and faintly of sizzling bacon and sausage meat. Again, quite normal – the smel of a city in a hurry and on its way to work.
‘My world,’ she whispered to herself. Her world … and al was wel .
Only that was lit le consolation. If her world was stil unaltered, if there weren’t even the tiniest of di erences to see here, it could only mean that Liam and the others had as yet to make any impact on whatever piece of history they’d landed in. There were two conclusions to draw from that, weren’t there? Either they were being incredibly careful and had managed to avoid any kind of contamination at al … or …
‘Or they arrived nowhere,’ she mut ered.
Dead. Torn to pieces by a wal of energy, by the explosion they’d caused. Or perhaps lost in chaos space. Foster had once ominously told her it was a place you’d never ever want – not in your wildest nightmares – to loiter around in.
Maddy was back from her trip to locate Foster. She’d not managed to nd him. Sal had thought it was a long shot. But she seemed to have cheered up a lit le, seemed shot. But she seemed to have cheered up a lit le, seemed hopeful that they were going to get them back home yet. For some reason she’d been gabbling on about expecting, when the bubble reset at twelve o’clock tonight and they were ‘reset’ back to Monday morning, the rst thing they’d hear would be a knock on the archway’s door, and somebody standing outside, perhaps feeling sil y, uncertain, and holding in their hand some sort of artefact from history with Liam’s scru y handwriting scrawled across it.
Sal wondered why Maddy was so sure that was going to happen, that the answer to this lit le mess they were in was actual y going to deliver itself to their front door like the morning post.
Maddy slurped on her third Dr Pepper and placed it back on the desk beside the other two, now forming an orderly queue of crumpled cans. She could feel the sugar kick building up inside and the o ce chair twisted one way then the other as she pul ed on the edge of the desk.
‘Wel ?’ she said. ‘What do you think, Bob?’
> Your thinking is logical. However, my AI duplicate would o er Liam caution against this course of action.
‘Of course you would, Bob … because that’s a hardcoded protocol.’
The cursor blinked for a few seconds.
> Also because of the danger of revealing the location of this eld o ce.
‘But Liam would stil go and do something like that,
‘But Liam would stil go and do something like that, right? He’d override your warning?’
> I am unable to answer that, Maddy.
‘But, come on, you know him bet er than me or Sal.’
> He has broken protocols before. He is capable of impulsive decisions.
Maddy smiled. ‘That he is.’
She picked up her can again and tossed another zzy mouthful down. ‘So, like, if somebody in history does nd a message from him … I guess we’re going to have to do a lot of tidying up after ourselves.’
> It wil depend on who discovers the message. And when in history that person comes from.
‘Wel , it would be dropped somewhere, sometime in the state of Texas. It could be anyone from some Apache Indian, or maybe a cowboy to … I dunno, maybe a civilwar soldier or an oil dril er, or some col ege kids goo ng around o the main highway. It could be anyone.’
> You presume they have only travel ed back in time a hundred or two hundred years. It is equal y possible they exist in what wil one day be Texas long before the arrival of colonials. It is equal y possible they exist in a time before the arrival of Native Americans.
‘Isn’t there a way you could at least best-guess how far back in time they’ve gone?’
> Negative. However, it might be possible for my AI duplicate to compare the density of tachyon particles in the vicinity of the explosion and the arrival point. The decay at rition is constant and this would give a fairly decay at rition is constant and this would give a fairly precise indication of when they are.
She stared at the screen. ‘Real y?’
> A rmative. It wil depend on how accurate the reading was.
If Bob was right, if that was true and they had a timestamp, then get ing some sort of message through time to her was the only course they could take. And Liam and the version of Bob’s AI that was with him were smart enough to come to the exact same conclusion.
‘I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be al right, I real y do.’
> I hope you are correct, Maddy.
She nodded, wishing she had just a lit le of Liam’s laidback devil-may-care at itude. She tilted her can and swil ed another mouthful. ‘Let’s have some music … It’s like a freakin’ graveyard in here.’
> I have an extensive database of music. What would you like for your listening pleasure?
‘Something heavy … something rocky.’
> Clarify ‘heavy’, ‘rocky’.
‘Bob … just give me something lively, then.’
> I can analyse the audio les in my database for variables such as beats-per-minute, wave-form, volume, number of times played.
‘Do that,’ she cut in. ‘Do that … number of times played. Give me something the previous team liked to listen to.’
> A rmative.
She heard his hard drive whirring softly, then a moment She heard his hard drive whirring softly, then a moment later the speakers on the desk either side of the main monitor began to chug with a heavy drum beat.
> Is this acceptable?
She sat back in her chair and put her feet up on the desk. It sounded pret y good to her, a bit like Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson … a bit like Chil i Peppers. ‘Yeah, cool … I like it.’
The music echoed around the archway, bouncing o the cool brick wal s, making the place feel a lit le more alive.
CHAPTER 35
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Liam watched Becks and the men lowering the bridge between them. He was surprised at the strength of the vine rope, showing no signs yet of fraying and snapping despite the tree trunk having been raised and lowered a dozen times already. It thudded down on the boulders on the far side of the river, bouncing and exing as it set led into place.
‘Al right,’ he shouted over the roar of the river.
‘Everyone who’s not staying … let’s go.’
The rst of those that were going along on the trip began to careful y bum-shu e their way along the log, get ing damp with spray from below. Twelve of them in total, leaving four behind to man the camp: Joseph Lam and Jonah Middleton, Sophia Yip and Keisha Jackson. Lam, as the only adult, was in charge, and Becks had made sure he ful y understood how important it was to keep the
‘windmil ’ rotating its arms.
The contraption was a post with a balanced crossbar like a pair of scales and someone’s rucksack on one side slowly leaking – one at a time – pebbles on to the ground. As the weight adjusted and the ‘scales’ slowly tilted, it turned a simple windmil : a long, thin spar of wood that turned a simple windmil : a long, thin spar of wood that swung through the air with a regular rhythm. Every few hours the rucksack needed to be topped up again to maintain the blade’s swinging action. It couldn’t be al owed to stop.
Lam understood enough of its purpose already –
maintaining a regular metronome-like signature of movement. Becks also briefed him on the warning signs that the area in the immediate vicinity was being probed: heat, a momentary localized jump in temperature of about ten degrees and a slight visual shimmering. If a probe actual y did occur while they were gone, she’d continued, there would almost certainly be another one directly afterwards to ‘double-check’ the rhythmic interference. And, provided the windmil was stil waving and duplicating the same unnatural pat ern, he could expect a two-yard-wide time window to open and for someone to emerge from it, looking for them.
Lam assured them he’d set up a rota to keep the contraption turning and then wished them al luck. They’d spent a few days preparing to set o on the trip. Sixty miles heading north-east, with no idea at al what sort of terrain they were going to have to cross. It could be jungle al the way. It could turn to desert for al they knew. Which was why they each carried in their school rucksacks as many plastic bot les as had come through with them ful of drinking water. They had some food too, parcels of gril ed sh meat wrapped in broad waxy leaves and tied up with vine rope. Enough food and water to last them a up with vine rope. Enough food and water to last them a few days and hopeful y they could forage for more along the way.
Kel y was rst across and waited for the next with a helping hand extended.
Everyone also had a weapon now, either a spear or metal-shard hatchet, or both. Juan had even managed to produce three surprisingly good bows from suitably sturdy branches and a quiver ful of arrows from sharpened bamboo canes, with etching made from thin strips of bark. The arrows had proved to be rubbish against the hard wood of a tree trunk, splintering on impact. But, tested on the long bulky carcass of one of those huge sh, the arrows had gone almost entirely through. Liam wondered, however, if a vol ey of their arrows would do lit le more than irritate a T-rex, if they met one. Sixty miles. He hoped the terrain ahead of them was as free of lumbering prehistoric monsters as this jungle had so far proved to be. Other than those ugly mud sh in the river, and that bloody carcass they’d encountered over a week ago, the only living things he’d seen had been dragon ies the size of seagul s and bugs the size of rats, although at night the jungle seemed to echo with the curious haunting cal s of a host of unknown creatures. The others were mostly across now, wet from the spray of the river and the sweat of exertion in this hot and humid jungle. Becks was the last one across. She walked nimbly and con dently along the exing trunk. Perfect balance and absolutely no fear of fal ing into the turbulent balance and absolutely no fear of fal ing into the turbulent froth beneath.
Liam pursed his lips, jealous of that. To know no fear, to not have that gnawing sensation of terror in your stomach every time something thudded heavily out there in the dark of the jungle. Not that he could a ord to show it. His stupid grin and the casual ick of his hand was al he al owed himself every time something happened that made him want to whimper. For example, he truly wished they’d not happened across that bloody ribcage. That meant something – or things – was out there sharing the jungle with them. Something they’d yet to see. Becks jumped o the end of the log on to the silt riverbank beside Liam. ‘Are you ready to proceed, Liam O’Connor?’
He sucked air through his teeth as he glanced around at the others. They al seemed to be looking at him to lead the way. ‘North-east, you say, Becks?’
Becks’s eyelids ut ered once as she consulted onboard data. ‘Three hundred and eleven degrees magnetic,’ she said, pointing her nger towards the thick apron of trees ahead of them. ‘We must proceed in that direction.’
‘Right, then,’ he said, grasping his spear in both hands. He looked back over his shoulder at the four they’d left behind on the far side of the river, and cupped his mouth.
‘I’l have a pint of stout to celebrate when we get back!’
They cocked their heads and looked confused. So did everyone on this side.
‘Stout? … Ale?’ he said. ‘You know?’
‘Stout? … Ale?’ he said. ‘You know?’
Whitmore scratched his beard thoughtful y. ‘Do you mean beer?’
Liam shook his head. ‘You Americans real y have no idea what a good beer is, do you?’
Whitmore shrugged. ‘I had a Guinness once.’
Becks shook her head earnestly. ‘Liam O’Connor, we do not have any alcoholic beverages in the camp. You wil not be able to have a stout.’
‘Oh, doesn’t mat er,’ he sighed. ‘I was only trying to be funny. Shal we just get on with this?’
‘A rmative.’ She looked up. The sun was breaching the tree tops, sending a scat ering starburst of rays across the morning sky. ‘I calculate we have nine and a quarter hours of daylight before the sun sets again.’
‘Then let’s get a wriggle on,’ said Liam. ‘We got a lot of miles to cover.’
Broken Claw watched them step o right past him and into the jungle. Right past him. He was amazed at how lit le the new creatures seemed to see with their smal eyes. Broken Claw could quite easily have reached out from the hummock of tal grass he was crouching behind and touched one of them.
The rest of his pack were there with him, dot ed around beneath the shelter of ferns, behind the slender trunks of the trees that lined the river, as many hunting males as he had teeth in his mouth. The females and the younger pack members, a lit le further back in the jungle for safety. So members, a lit le further back in the jungle for safety. So many of them hiding within a few yards of them, and yet none of these curious pale upright creatures seemed to have any idea they were being watched.
Broken Claw struggled to make sense of that. Perhaps these things had spot ed them, but for some cunning reason were hiding their reactions? Again, another reason to be wary of them. That and those sticks they carried, those sticks that could easily trap sh from the raging river. And new things. Curved sticks with a taut line of vine stretched from one end to the other. He wondered what these new devices did.
The new creatures stumbled clumsily and noisily past, up the gentle incline of the bank, and disappeared into the dark canopy of the jungle. Broken Claw turned from them to study the others on the far side of the river. They were pul ing on another length of vine and he watched in silent awe as the tree trunk across the water slowly jerked and wobbled and raised inches at a time, reminding him of one of the large plain-dwel ers, raising its head and long neck after drinking from a pool of water.
He understood this thing now. He understood its purpose.
A way across the dangerous water. A way that could be raised and lowered at wil .
He caught sight of yel ow eyes dot ed here and there, the intent gaze of his extended family pack. They too were watching the tree rise, apparently under its own power. That was good. Good that they were seeing for themselves That was good. Good that they were seeing for themselves how wary they must be of these harmless-looking new arrivals.
Broken Claw o ered a soft bark and the yel ow eyes vanished. And the pack, like a ghostly dawn mist dissipating under the warm light of a rising sun, was suddenly gone, as if they’d evaporated into the jungle.
CHAPTER 36
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
It was gone mid-afternoon as they neared the crest of the steep jungle mountain they’d been struggling up since dawn. Through eeting gaps in the foliage canopy, Liam had caught glimpses of an ebony ridge of peaks ahead of them, to the left and right, as far as he could see. He’d considered suggesting they turn left or right to try nding a way round, but that might mean a detour of days. Bet er, he decided, to press on up the sloping jungle hil side and tackle the ridge. At least it would be al downhil on the far side.
Up ahead, now, the jungle was fast thinning, giving way to smal er withered trees trying to nd a foothold on a ground of shale and gravel dot ed with coarse tufts of grass. Just ahead of him Becks emerged into sunlight. He noticed that her back, taut with muscle, was bone dry. Don’t these clones ever sweat? Liam was drenched. Every inch of his skin was slick with perspiration, the salt running down from his fringe stinging his eyes. Behind him he could hear Franklyn and Whitmore talking. They hadn’t stopped since they’d set out from the camp, a relentless jabbering to and fro on al things prehistoric. It was certainly reassuring to know their group prehistoric. It was certainly reassuring to know their group had what sounded like a fair bit of expertise on this alien environment, but Liam would happily have paid a ship steward’s monthly wage for them to just shut up for ve minutes.
Whitmore dabbed at his damp forehead. ‘But I want to know why we haven’t seen any yet. This Mesozoic era was very favourable to the larger species. I mean –’
‘No need to patronize me, Mr Whitmore,’ Franklyn cut in. ‘I know al that. I know this was the most densely populated era, that the Cretaceous was real y the time of the dinosaurs. Much more so than the Jurassic era.’
Whitmore nodded. ‘Mind you, it wouldn’t have sounded quite so snappy if they’d cal ed that lm Cretaceous Park, would it?’
‘At least it would have been more accurate,’ said Franklyn. ‘But it’s so strange, don’t you think? I mean, Dinosaur Val ey State Park isn’t so far away … and the Paluxy riverbed there is covered in fossils from al types of species. How come this jungle val ey’s, like, deserted?’
Franklyn’s voice was laden with disappointment. ‘I mean, here we are … the perfect time, in fact, to see al the classic species: T-rex, ankylosaurus, stegosaurus, triceratops, and yet we’ve seen nothing.’
‘It could be the jungle itself is unfavourable terrain for the larger animals.’
‘That’s not true,’ replied Franklyn. ‘It’s nutrient heaven for the herbivores. And where there are herbivores you should also nd carnivores. This jungle should be ful of should also nd carnivores. This jungle should be ful of them.’
‘Wel ,’ said Whitmore, looking up the slope at the thinning vegetation and craggy peak ahead of them, ‘no more jungle now.’
They and the rest of the party fol owed Liam and Becks out of the lush green into a mostly grey-brown world of slate and shingle. Up ahead the slope rose to a fractured cli face of sharp slate angles. He could see that the robogirl was already climbing up it, making swift progress from one treacherous handhold to the next. He watched her pul ing herself up the sheer cli face without any apparent di culty.
Robo-girl. Now they al knew she was some kind of a robot, and after seeing her nearly skewer Laura like one of those mud sh – and, Lord knows, if Liam hadn’t intervened, she would have kil ed them al , one after the other – there was no way anyone was going to entirely trust her.
Whitmore’s feet slid on the shale as he scrambled awkwardly up the last fty yards to the base of the cli to join Liam.
‘We … we’re …’ Whitmore gasped like an asthmatic as he wiped the sweat from his brow. He looked up at the sheer rock face. ‘We’re climbing that?’
‘Yup,’ said Liam.
‘I … I’m …’ He was stil heaving to catch some air. ‘I’m not sure I’l be able to.’
Liam shook his head as he peeled the rucksack o his Liam shook his head as he peeled the rucksack o his back. ‘Not a lot of choice, Mr Whitmore. It’s that direction we need to go.’
He swal owed anxiously. ‘Uh … I’m real y not so great with heights.’
‘Don’t worry about that, Mr Whitmore. She can pul you up if you’d like.’
Franklyn pu ed and wheezed up the last few yards, kicking loose shale beneath his trainers. ‘That goes for me too. I’m exhausted.’
Liam looked up the rock face and saw Becks was already at the top and bracing her legs against an outcrop for balance. She pul ed the heavy coils of vine rope o her shoulder, secured one end round her waist and tossed the rest down. It clat ered on to the shale with several dozen yards in length to spare.
Liam looked at them both and down at the others making their way up the last few dozen yards of the mountainside. Beyond them he could see the green carpet of the jungle rol ing al the way down the steep peak they’d been ascending to the deep val ey below. He thought he could just make out the hairline silver glint of the river snaking through the lush emerald carpet, and there it was … a smal oval of lighter green no bigger than his ngernail: their clearing.
‘I am ready to proceed,’ Becks cal ed down.
They al studied the cli face unhappily: sixty-foot high, al razor-sharp edges and craggy outcrops that promised to impale or slice anyone unfortunate enough to take a impale or slice anyone unfortunate enough to take a tumble.
‘Don’t al be chickens,’ said Becks.
Liam glanced up at her and saw she was smiling. Did she just try to be funny?
‘Cluck, cluck,’ she added in her monotone voice. Liam shook his head, put his hands on his hips and smiled. ‘So, I see you’ve found a sense of humour, Becks!’
‘I have been observing and learning humorous dialogue exchanges, Liam. I am now capable of delivering basic humorous responses.’
‘Wel done!’ he shouted back.
‘You are al lit le chickens. Cluck, cluck, cluck,’ she said again with a hint of pride in her dry voice. Not exactly hilarious, Liam decided, as he looked around at the concerned expressions on the others. But at least her AI was having a go at being more human.
‘Is she al right?’ asked Juan.
Liam shrugged. ‘It’s her at empt at a joke. Don’t worry. She’s ne.’ He looked up at her. ‘Becks! Maybe we should save the joking around for later? Al right? You’re scaring the kids.’
Her face straightened. ‘A rmative.’
‘OK, then.’ He turned back to the others. ‘Who’s rst?’
There wasn’t exactly a rush.
Liam was the last one up.
As Becks hefted him up on to the ridge and helped him to his feet, he could see she looked fatigued. In fact, he to his feet, he could see she looked fatigued. In fact, he realized, it was the rst time he’d ever seen her looking like that. Genuinely spent. ‘You OK, Becks?’
‘Recommendation: I should now consume protein and then rest for several hours,’ she said. Her grey eyes met his for a moment and he wondered if there was a hint of gratitude in her expression, gratitude that he’d bothered to ask if she was OK.
‘OK, you do that,’ he said, slapping her shoulder. ‘We could al probably do with a rest. Maybe we should set up camp here for tonight?’
She considered that for a moment, panning her eyes around the immediate surroundings. ‘This is an acceptable location.’
‘Right. I’l tel the others.’ He wandered across the top of the peak towards the rest of them. They were clustered together and staring out over the sloping ridge on the far side of the peak. From where he stood, he could see nothing but a rich blue sky and a far-o top-heavy bank of cloud hanging above a at horizon like a giant oating anvil.
‘What is it? Can you see something?’ He clat ered over, kicking stones and raising dust until he was standing right beside them. ‘Oh … my,’ his voice ut ered softly.
‘There’s al the dinosaurs you’ve ever wanted to see, kid,’ said Whitmore to Franklyn.
The peak sloped down gently, grey shale gradual y giving way in patches to an enormous plain of verdant grassland dot ed with islands of jungle – tal straight grassland dot ed with islands of jungle – tal straight deciduous canopy trees draped with the vines they’d come to rely on. Around the patches of jungle, herds of huge beasts Liam couldn’t begin to name grazed lazily in the late-afternoon sun. Between the slowly meandering groups of giants, smal er packs of eet-footed beasts ocked and weaved in an endless zig-zagging race.
‘My God,’ whispered Kel y. ‘This is real y … quite …
incredible.’
Whitmore and Franklyn were grinning like a pair of children in a toy store.
Beyond the sweeping plain, Liam noticed the at horizon changed from a drab olive colour to a rich turquoise.
Laura was frowning at that, confused. ‘Is that an ocean over there? I don’t recal Texas having a freakin’ ocean in the middle of it.’
Franklyn nodded. ‘Sixty-ve mil ion years ago there was,’ he said, adopting the learned air of a col ege principal. ‘An inland ocean that ran north–south up the middle of America, cut ing it in two. In fact, Laura, you probably wouldn’t recognize Earth if you were looking at it from orbit right now.’
Liam watched in silence for a good minute, stunned, like everyone else, into stil ness and quiet as he gazed out on a scene that no human before had ever witnessed, nor should ever witness again. A moment of incalculable privilege, uniqueness. Once upon a time – and it felt like another lifetime now – he’d been standing in the creaking another lifetime now – he’d been standing in the creaking bowels of a dying ship, waist deep in ice-cold water, facing certain death and crying like a smal child. And there was Foster, holding his hand out to him ut ering a promise that if he joined him there were going to be things he’d see, wonderful things. Incredible things.
‘Wel , this is certainly one of them,’ Liam whispered to himself.
‘What’s that?’ said Kel y.
Liam roused himself and grinned. ‘Nothing, I just said
… so, this is where al you big fel as have been hiding.’
A good-natured ripple of laughter spread among them.
‘We’re camping up here tonight,’ he announced, studying the distant strip of ocean blue on the horizon.
‘And tomorrow we’l be at the seaside, so we wil .’
CHAPTER 37
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Liam savoured the warmth of the re on his face and hands. It had turned out to be surprisingly cool up here on the peak once the sun had gone down, and his sweat-damp clothes had begun to feel uncomfortably chil y against his skin.
In the sky above the dark plain spread out before them, the last stain of day spread a warm, rich, amber light along the at horizon and the night was beginning to l with the distant haunting chorus of creatures cal ing to each other across miles of open plain.
He heard the scu of boots and skit ering shale approaching out of the dark. Becks appeared and sat down heavily next to him. ‘Hel o, Liam.’
‘Hel o,’ he replied, chewing on the rubbery corner of his reheated gril ed mud sh. He looked at her eyes, glistening as they re ected the camp re in front of them. He wondered what went on behind them when she wasn’t busy assessing mission priorities or threat factors. He wondered if that tiny organic brain linked to her computer could appreciate how beautiful that amber sky was … or enjoy the pleasing sensation of warmth from the re.
‘Your AI’s done a bit of growing again, hasn’t it?’ he
‘Your AI’s done a bit of growing again, hasn’t it?’ he said presently. ‘Your cluck, cluck thing earlier was … wel , about as funny as one of my old Auntie Noreen’s jokes, but
… the thing is it sounded almost human.’
‘Thank you.’ She nodded. ‘It has been useful to me observing these younger humans. Their social interactions are more heavily nuanced by emotional indicators and less restricted by expected convention.’
His face creased as he digested that. ‘You mean they’re more likely to blurt out whatever they’re thinking than adults?’
‘A rmative.’
‘Wel now,’ he said, smiling, ‘that’s probably true.’
Laura Whitely, sit ing opposite, caught what they were saying over the babble of dinosaur talk going on between Kel y, Whitmore and Franklyn. ‘I don’t blurt,’ she said.
‘Children do that.’
Becks’s gaze shifted to her. ‘Are you not a child?’
She gave Liam an is she for real? look, one eyebrow cocked with incredulity. ‘Excuse me? I’m fteen. I’m not a child. I’m a teenager.’
‘You stil have four years of physical and mental growth to undergo before you are technical y an adult human being,’ said Becks. ‘Optimum mental and physical functionality is obtained at nineteen years of age. This makes you stil a child.’
‘Yeah? And what about you? What are you, then?’
Becks’s jaw dropped open, a facial expression Liam had not seen her pul before. Nor an expression he could recal not seen her pul before. Nor an expression he could recal Bob ever pul ing either, for that mat er. Becks’s eyes gazed at the re for a long, long time, the lids ut ering slightly every now and then.
She’s real y giving that some serious thought.
‘I wil …’ she began after a while. ‘I wil never be a complete human being.’
Laura’s face softened ever so slightly. A second ago she’d looked like she wanted to square up to Becks, now she almost looked sorry for her. ‘You sound sad about that.’
‘Sad?’ Becks considered that word. ‘Sad,’ she said again quietly. ‘My developmental AI routines al ow me to learn and replicate human behaviour pat erns. But I am unable to directly experience emotions. This would a ect my performance as a support unit.’
‘So, let me get this straight,’ said Laura, shu ing round the re, closer to them so she wasn’t being drowned out by Franklyn’s droning voice. ‘You’re esh and blood, just like a human being, but your head is, like, al robot?’
‘My body is a genetical y enhanced female human body. I have multiple-threaded muscle tissue capable of a ve hundred and seventy-six per cent performance response.’
Laura looked at Liam. ‘That means she’s … what? Like, six times stronger than she should be?’
Liam nodded. ‘Aye, that sounds about right.’
‘I also have a high-density calcium-based support chassis
–’ ‘Strong bones,’ said Liam.
Laura nodded. It looked like she’d gured that out for Laura nodded. It looked like she’d gured that out for herself.
‘I also have a rapid-reaction, high white-cel -count uid repair system.’ Becks turned to Laura. ‘My blood clots quickly.’
‘Right.’
‘Al of this gene technology wil be developed by W. G. Systems in the year 2043 for military applications: genetical y engineered combat units.’
‘Wow,’ ut ered Laura. ‘You mean like super soldiers.’
‘Correct. I was designed for war. Speci cal y subterfuge and covert operations.’
Liam smiled. ‘But don’t let that put you o her – she’s a sweetie real y.’
Becks looked at him curiously. ‘Sweetie?’
Liam put an arm round her shoulders and hugged her clumsily. ‘We go back a bit, Becks and me. Would you believe it, she used to be a man, so she did? Big chap, just like some muscle-man cal ed Schwarzenho er or something. Apparently he becomes a president of yours sometime.’
‘Oh my God.’ Laura made a face. ‘You don’t mean Arnold Schwarzenegger?’
‘That’s the fel a. Anyway, Becks was cal ed Bob back then. But … wel , you had a bit of a scrap, didn’t you? And
–’ ‘Caution,’ said Becks. ‘It is inadvisable to reveal details of previous missions.’
Liam hushed. Perhaps they’d revealed more than they Liam hushed. Perhaps they’d revealed more than they ought. ‘Yes, you’re right. Sorry, Laura.’ Liam decided to change the subject. ‘Becks, we should consider what message we want to leave in the ground, you know?’
Becks nodded. ‘A rmative. This is important.’
Kel y overheard that. ‘You guys discussing the help message?’
And that shut up everyone around the re, even Franklyn.
‘Yes,’ replied Liam. ‘I’ve been giving it some thought, Becks … We would have to actual y reveal the exact date and location of our eld o ce.’
She frowned. ‘Negative. The location and time-stamp must remain known only to agency operatives.’
‘But we have to, do you not see? Because Sal and Maddy aren’t exactly likely to go fossil-hunting in Texas any time soon. It wil be someone else who nds it. And the only way it wil nd its way to them is if we reveal that.’
‘You know,’ said Kel y, ‘that kind of information would be mighty powerful stu . The fact that time-travel technology exists. The fact that humans have actual y been back to dinosaur times … that’s world-changing information, Liam. You understand that, don’t you? You mentioned time contamination and time waves and stu like that … Won’t it –?’
‘Oh, for sure,’ said Liam. ‘That’s the kind of nightmare we were recruited to prevent – contamination of the timeline.’
timeline.’
‘And yet you’l be causing it.’
‘I know … I know. But it’s the only way.’ He looked at Chan, sit ing quietly between Leonard and Juan. ‘The timeline is already badly broken. Who knows what state the future is in now? And, yes, by deliberately stamping a big ol’ message into the ground, we’re about to make it a lot worse. But – and it’s taken me some time to see this for myself – time is like, I dunno, like liquid. It’s uid. What can be changed can be changed right back, so long as you know where to go and what to do. And, of course, as long as you’ve got a time machine.’
Liam nodded at Chan. ‘We need to get Edward back to 2015. That xes part of the problem. Then, once we’ve done that, Becks and I wil come right back here and undo al that contamination.’
‘How?’
‘Very simple,’ said Liam.
CHAPTER 38
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Liam looked down at the shale by his feet. He dragged a nger through it. The others watched curiously as his nger inscribed four let ers in the gravel. He spel ed the word Help. Then with his hand he messed it up. ‘We’l erase the message we just left,’ he said. ‘And everything that happened as a result of it being discovered, wel …
it’l al un-happen. It’l al be erased too.’
‘If your message includes the location of your base,’ said Kel y, ‘I assure you, it won’t be some curious fossil-hunter that turns up, it’l be some secret government agency. NSA, CIA, maybe some spooks we don’t even know about …
They’l storm the place. Kick the door in. Delta Force guys with guns. What you’ve got is too valuable.’
‘Oh.’ Liam hadn’t considered that.
‘You could be endangering your col eagues,’ said Laura.
‘They wouldn’t hurt them, would they? They’d just want to be asking questions, would they not?’
Kel y shrugged. ‘With something like time-travel technology at stake? Who knows? Our secret services have a long history of shooting places up rst and asking questions later.’
Whitmore cut in. ‘Oh, come on! They’re professionals, Whitmore cut in. ‘Oh, come on! They’re professionals, the best in the world!’
Several of the others joined in. Some agreeing with that, some of them disagreeing.
Liam looked at Becks. ‘Maybe this is not such a great idea.’
‘You wish me to proceed with the alternate plan?’ she said softly.
Liam looked at her, pleased that she’d had the sense to ask that in lit le more than a whisper. Not so encouraged, though, seeing one of her hands inching and reaching for a hatchet.
‘No, not yet,’ he said, reaching out and grasping her hand in his. ‘Not yet, OK?’
She nodded.
‘Unless,’ said Edward quietly, his voice almost lost beneath the to and fro of al the others. ‘Unless, there’s a real y important reason not to hurt anyone.’
The others stopped and looked at him. It was the rst thing he’d said al evening. Al day, in fact. Edward’s eyes widened as they al stared at him. ‘I … I was just saying …’
‘Go on,’ said Liam.
‘Wel … if part of your message was a … was in, like, a code. Then there’s a reason to … you know, not to want to shoot everyone up, because they know they’d need someone to decode it.’
Liam pursed his lips in thought. ‘That’s true.’ A code, a secret, hinting at stil further secrets and revelations. What secret, hinting at stil further secrets and revelations. What person wouldn’t want to know more?
‘If a message is going to lead some government spooks right up to the front door of your secret organization,’ said Kel y, ‘then you can bet the bit of the message they can’t make sense of wil be driving them nuts. Edward’s right. They’l want your col eagues alive.’
‘Al right,’ said Liam. ‘So then the rst bit of the message needs to be the time and place of our eld o ce.’
He turned to Becks. ‘That’s how the message wil nd its way to Maddy and Sal. The rest … the time-stamp they need to aim for, that bit should be the super-secret coded bit. Can you come up with a code, Becks?’
She nodded. ‘I can produce a mathematical algorithm and use that as an alpha-numeric o set code. My duplicate should be able to recognize the pat ern of the algorithm and produce a decode key.’
‘No,’ said Edward, shaking his head. ‘It’s too easy to break a math-based code. If they … you know, if they put a big enough computer on it, they could crack it. Simple.’
Kel y nodded. ‘And you can bet the NSA or the CIA or whichever bunch of spooks ends up cal ing wil have no shortage of computing power at their disposal to crunch your code.’
‘There is no other way to generate a code that can be unlocked at the eld o ce,’ said Becks. ‘My duplicate needs to have the same library of algorithms –’
‘Every math-based code can be broken,’ said Edward, his quiet voice nding a lit le more con dence, ‘you know?
quiet voice nding a lit le more con dence, ‘you know?
Eventual y. It’s just a case of how much computer power you put on it.’
‘Edward’s right,’ said Howard. ‘Think about it, what if the message is discovered, say …’ He turned to Whitmore and Franklyn. ‘When did they rst discover fossils in this place we’re headed to?’
Franklyn shrugged. ‘Early 1900s.’
‘Right. So if the American secret services of that time secured that fossil back then they’l have had a whole century of time to crack the algorithm and decode it before they come knocking.’
‘But computers powerful enough to work on it were only developed in the ’80s,’ said Juan. ‘Don’ forget that.’
‘That’s more than enough time,’ said Howard. ‘They’l come knocking knowing the entire contents of the message. Their only concern wil be securing your agency’s HQ and con scating al your technology. Your col eagues wil be a secondary consideration.’
‘Your code has to be like a personal thing,’ said Edward.
‘Like a secret. Something only you and they know.’
Howard shook his head. ‘I’m thinking this is a seriously bad idea. We could end up real y messing with history. And I thought you guys are meant to stop that kind of thing happening.’
‘And staying here, young man?’ said Whitmore. ‘What do you think that’s going to do to history? Homo-sapiens existing right now? Sixty-ve mil ion years before they’re due?’
due?’
Howard shrugged. ‘We won’t exist for long, though, wil we?’ His words silenced the teacher. ‘You actual y think the sixteen of us are going to survive and thrive? You think we’re going to breed and produce lots of o spring and establish a Cretaceous-era human civilization that’s going to change the world?’
Whitmore shrugged and half-nodded. ‘It’s possible.’
Howard laughed. ‘No, it’s not. We’l eventual y die out here.’ He looked around at them. ‘There are six females in the group.’ He looked at Becks. ‘Not counting you. I’m not real y sure what you are.’
‘I am incapable of sexual reproduction,’ she replied atly.
‘Six fertile females,’ continued Howard. ‘We might be able to make a few babies, but there are too few of us to sustain ourselves. If disease doesn’t get us, or some hungry carnivore, then in-breeding would eventual y.’ He managed a wistful smile. ‘We’l die out soon enough … months, years, decades maybe … but it’l happen and history won’t be changed by us having been here. Maybe we shouldn’t do this. Maybe we should accept we’re stuck here and –’
‘You can forget that!’ said Laura. ‘I want to go home!’
Kel y nodded. ‘I think we al want that, right?’
Heads nodded around the re.
Liam sat forward, held his hands out towards the re and rubbed them. ‘We’re doing the message, Leonard. We have to. Now I’ve just got to gure out something that only we … and they know.’
we … and they know.’
‘How big is your agency?’ asked Laura.
Liam smiled and replied hesitantly. ‘Oh, you know, it’s big. Lots of us, so there are.’
‘You know them wel ?’
‘Sure, we’re al pret y close.’
‘Friends?’
‘Yes, I’d like to think we’re –’
‘Then maybe there’s something like a song, or a lm or something? You know? Something like that you could use as a common reference point for –’
Liam suddenly felt his hand being crushed by a vice-like grip. He looked down and saw Becks was holding it, and squeezing it.
‘Ow! Becks, you’re hurting me,’ he hissed. ‘What’s the mat er?’
She let go and looked at him, her eyes widened with a mixture of surprise, and perhaps even elation. ‘I have had an idea, Liam O’Connor.’
CHAPTER 39
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
From the darkness they watched them. Beyond the il umination of the dancing yel ow ower in the middle. Broken Claw had seen this fascinating dancing creature only once before, after a storm. When a stab of light from the sky had come down and touched the long dead trunk of a tree. The yel ow ower had engulfed it, consumed it, producing such unbearable heat as it did so. He’d been young then. And ever since then the yel ow ower had been an occasional monster in his dreams, chasing him, reaching out for him, wanting so much to consume him. And now here it was, tamed like some sort of a pet by these new creatures. They were gathered around it, unafraid of it, every now and then casual y throwing a branch on to it and not even inching as the creature reared up angrily, sending tendrils of light up into the dark sky.He looked around at his pack, cowering further back down the slope, clearly unhappy at being out of the jungle and here in the open. This was not their terrain, this was not where they were strong. Open ground made them visible, it made them vulnerable. Larger predators existed in the open; large, lumbering and stupid predators like the in the open; large, lumbering and stupid predators like the tal upright one with tiny front claws, enormous jaws, powerful rear legs and a strong sweeping tail. His pack cal ed it Many-Teeth.
Out in the open Many-Teeth could quite easily kil them al . After al , Broken Claw’s kind were smal , fragile things compared to this powerful mountain of muscle and energy. But between them his family pack had kil ed quite a few in his living memory. And always in the same way: luring them into the jungle with the tempting cry of one of their young. A pitiful cry that perfectly replicated that of a young helpless plant-eater, a cry that signal ed fear and proved an irresistible taunt to one of those large stupid beasts. Once among the densely packed trees, unable to sweep its tail easily, unable to turn quickly, the pack was always able to leap upon the various Many-Teeth they’d lured in that way and begin to tear through their thick hides and rubbery bands of tough muscle tissue to the vulnerable soft tissues inside as they thrashed and roared. Broken Claw had led many such at acks in past seasons, always the rst to gnaw his way through the hide and into the bel ies of such creatures, slashing and pul ing through the vulnerable insides as the creature stil stomped and roared, pul ing himself towards the throbbing red organ in its chest. It was slashing at this that usual y fel ed a ManyTeeth. Broken Claw and the others knew that this organ –
which seemed to have a life of its own, which every species of creature seemed to possess – was the source of its very life.
its very life.
In the seasons of his youth, the jungles had once been ful of the larger stupid species. So many of them in fact that they often kil ed many more than they could eat, often only bothering to consume their favourite organs and leaving the rest of the carcass to rot.
But there were fewer now, far fewer of the bigger creatures. They only existed on the plain these days. Broken Claw understood a simple principle. They had hunted too many of them. They had been too successful for their own good in the jungle, and his family pack had been forced to migrate from one jungle val ey to the next several times during his lifespan. Now too, in recent seasons, this jungle had become sparsely populated –
another hunting ground that they’d almost completely exhausted.
There certainly was not enough food available in the jungle val ey for these new creatures as wel . Slowly, lightly, he glided forward across the loose shale, mindful that his agile feet not dislodge anything that might make the slightest noise. Behind him he heard the soft barking cough of one of his mates warning him not to get too close to these things. He ignored her. He needed to listen to the noises these things made. Perhaps their sounds could be learned, even mimicked. Perhaps they could employ the same technique they used on the Many-Teeth, identifying a sound that could be practised and used by their young to lure one of the new creatures away from the others.
others.
If just one of them could be isolated. They could study it, understand how dangerous it could be, understand its weakness. Perhaps in the last moments of its life, even share some of its intel igence. Then he could nd out if this creature also had the same ut ering red orb in its ribcage, the organ that provided life.
CHAPTER 40
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Liam gazed up at the behemoth slowly ambling their way.
‘You’re sure it’s a plant-eater?’
Franklyn laughed. ‘Yes, relax, of course it is. It’s an alamosaurus.’
Liam watched the enormous long-necked creature walk with ponderous deliberation across the open plain towards the patch of jungle behind them. He could feel each heavy step through the trembling ground.
Jay-zus-’n’-Mother-Mary, that thing’s the size of a smal ship!
He guessed he could park a double-decker tram in the space between its fore and its hind legs and stil have room to stand on top. The creature’s tiny head, lit le more than a rounded nub on the end of its long muscular neck, swept down close to the ground as it closed the distance between them. Final y coming to a halt to inspect the smal bipedal creatures standing in front of it.
‘Are you absolutely certain?’ cried Liam, watching the thing’s head hover at shoulder height just a few yards in front of him.
‘Yes! He’s probably more scared of you than you are of
–’
–’ ‘Oh –’ Liam shook his head vigorously – ‘I, uh … I very much doubt that.’
‘See? He’s just checking you out,’ said Franklyn, slowly stepping forward to join Liam and Becks. ‘Hey there, big man!’ he cooed softly. ‘It’s OK, we’re not carnivores.’
‘Wel , actual y, I am,’ said Whitmore. ‘A lit le veal and a nice bot le of Sancerre on a Saturday night.’
Smal beady black eyes, in a rounded head not much bigger than a cider keg, studied Liam intently. Its nostrils ared for a moment as it inhaled the curious new smel of humans, then curiosity compel ed it to take a solitary step forward. Liam felt the ground beneath his feet shudder.
‘Oh, he likes you, man,’ cal ed out Juan.
Liam felt a fetid blast of warm air across his face and closed his eyes as the dinosaur’s head moved even closer.
‘Ohh … I’m not happy about this,’ he hissed out of the side of his mouth. Thick leathery lips the size of an automobile tyre probed his face, then moved up to explore the intriguing texture of his dark hair.
‘Oh, he real y likes you, man. Want us to leave you two alone?’ chuckled Juan.
‘Hair,’ said Whitmore. ‘That’s an evolutionary step that’s mil ions of years away for this creature. The texture of it must be fascinating to him.’
Liam felt a sharp tug on his scalp. ‘Ow! Wel , he’s bleedin’ wel eating it now, so he is!’ He slapped at the creature’s mouth. ‘Hey! Ouch! Let go! Becks! Help!’
Becks reacted swiftly. She stepped towards him and Becks reacted swiftly. She stepped towards him and swung a st at the alamosaurus’s nose. The blow smacked heavily against the leathery skin and with a roar of pain and horror the giant let go of Liam. Its thick muscular neck reared up suddenly, a tree-fel ing in reverse, and it let loose a deafening bel ow that reminded Liam of the dying groans of the Titanic’s hul . The air vibrated with its startled roar.
Liam clasped his hands over his ears to protect his rat ling eardrums, as the cry spread across the plain from one giant herbivore to the next. The alamosaur stumbled back from them on its tree-trunk legs, turning in a long cumbersome arc, and began to shamble away in a loping slow-motion run that felt through the ground like the early tremors of an earthquake.
‘Oh, great!’ shouted Franklyn. ‘Now you started a stampede!’
The calm scene of moments ago, a vista of leviathans grazing peaceful y across the open plain, had been instantly transformed into a deafening display of motion and panic. Liam watched the smal er species of planteaters scrambling to avoid being stampeded by the other alamosaurs darting into the islands of trees and ferns for cover.
‘Whoa!’ Juan was doubling up with excited laughter.
‘Those alamo things are real chickens, man! Look at the suckers go!’
Amid the confusion of movement and kicked-up dust Liam caught sight of something else. Dark shapes behind Liam caught sight of something else. Dark shapes behind them, half a mile away, smal er than any of the other species out on the plain. Just a glimpse of them, a second, no more. Then they were gone to ground, hidden among the knee-high tufts of olive-coloured grass scat ered in threadbare clumps across the open plain.
Liam turned to ask if anyone else had seen them, but the others were stil marvel ing at the sight of an entire food chain on the move, a thunderous spectacle of swaying folds of leathery skin and sinews taut with panic. He turned back to look again. Nothing. As if the dark shapes had never ever existed.
What the heck are those?
Vanished like skeins of dark smoke, like that ghostly seeker.
Or am I losing me mind now?
It was ful y ve minutes before some semblance of calm returned to the area; the various species of herbivores gathered in a worried-looking cluster a mile away. Tal necks protruded from the pack standing ful y erect, watching them from afar like impossibly large meerkats.
‘Oh, that was fun,’ said Laura. ‘Can we go do it again?’
Liam looked at Becks. Her face was folded with a confused expression. ‘Becks? What’s the mat er?’
She looked down at her st, stil bal ed up. ‘I did not hit it very hard.’
‘You must have hit a sensitive spot,’ said Whitmore. They made their way across the plain towards the coastline They made their way across the plain towards the coastline on the horizon, most of the time with Franklyn complaining about how Becks had ruined his chance to study the creatures up close. By noon they were standing among a scat ering of boulders and looking at a broad beach of dark coarse sand and a tranquil tropical ocean sending gently lapping waves of surf up the shingle and back down again with a soothing hiss.
‘So?’ said Liam.
Becks studied the view for a long moment, her eyes narrowed. ‘Twenty-one miles north-east of our current location.’
Liam grimaced. ‘So then it’s underwater, is it?’
‘Negative,’ she replied, pointing at the horizon ahead of them. ‘This is a large bay. Observe the horizon.’
Liam looked again, squinting. Then he saw it: a pale line of low humps on the horizon that he’d earlier assumed were clouds. Fol owing the uneven grey-blue line to the left he could see it becoming more distinct as it drew closer. The broad beach they were looking along seemed to promise that it was angling gradual y towards the distant spur of land and, if they were patient enough with it, it would link up with the spur eventual y.
‘Recommendation: we fol ow the beach around to the landmass ahead.’
Liam nodded at the low hump of land. ‘Is that the place we need to be?’
She nodded. ‘Information: the distance of the landmass is nine point seven six miles.’
is nine point seven six miles.’
Whitmore nodded. ‘Then that spur has to be it, right?
That’s what wil one day be the fossil bed.’
Becks nodded slowly. ‘Information: a ninety-three per cent probability you are correct.’
‘My God,’ he said, scratching his beard. ‘Who knows?
Some of the footprints we’l see along the beach over there might just end up being some of the fossils we’ve seen in museums in our time?’ His eyes widened and he shook his head incredulously. ‘Isn’t that the craziest idea?’ He slapped Liam on the shoulder. ‘Time travel must drive you insane if you think about it too much.’
Liam cocked an eyebrow. ‘Oh, I’ve had my share of headaches thinking on it, so I have.’
They stepped forward, down through the boulders and on to the coarse shingle. ‘This is good,’ said Becks to Liam, pointing at the beach. ‘We are not leaving tracks.’
He looked down. She was right. The beach wasn’t sand, it was a coarse gravel that clacked and shifted wetly underfoot, but left nothing as clear as a print behind them.
‘Oh, good.’ He nodded. ‘So there you go – something to put a smile on your face, then?’
She gave that some thought. ‘This is minimizing our overal contamination liability.’ Her gaze shifted from their feet back up to him. ‘Correct. That makes me … happy.’
‘There you go, you miserable sod,’ he replied cheerful y.
‘Things are looking up. We’l be home soon enough.’
They clat ered down through the wet shingle until the rst warm waves of tropical water hissed up to and rst warm waves of tropical water hissed up to and around their feet. Up ahead the others had decided to wade knee-deep into the sea and were splashing each other noisily. She pursed her lips in thought as she watched them, a curious gesture she must have picked up from one of the girls, Liam decided. A gesture that Bob’s muscular face would have struggled to reproduce. ‘If we successful y complete the mission, Liam O’Connor, and we return to the eld o ce, do you intend to retire me?’
‘Retire? What do you mean?’
‘Terminate this body and replace it with a male support unit? I heard Sal Vikram refer to this organic frame as a
“mistake”.’
He’d not given it much thought. Becks was Sal’s error –
she’d not bothered to check the gender marker on the containment tube – and they’d not had time to consider growing another. But certainly neither Maddy nor Sal had mentioned terminating her and disposing of her body.
‘Why would we want to go and do that, Becks?’
‘The male support frame is eighty-seven per cent more e ective than the female frame as a combat unit.’
‘Al right, maybe that’s true, but why’d the agency give us female babies as wel , then?’
‘Female support frames can be useful for covert operations where a female cover is required.’
He scratched his head. ‘Wel now, I real y don’t see why we can’t have one of each of you, you know? A Bob and a Becks. There’re no agency rules, are there, you know, against us having two support units in a team?’
against us having two support units in a team?’
‘Negative. I am not aware of any agency rules on that.’
‘So, wel , there you are … why not? We’l have two of you instead of one.’
They walked in silence for a while, Liam intrigued by how human her question had sounded.
‘Have I functioned as e ciently as the Bob unit?’ she asked after a while.
‘Yes, of course. I don’t know what we’d have done without you so far. But you know it’s stil so very weird. Aren’t you actual y Bob anyway? Or at least a copy of Bob in a di erent skin?’
‘Negative. My AI has adapted enough since being copied to be considered a di erent AI ident. I have experienced data that Bob has not. Also, the organic brain that is interfaced with the AI is genetical y di erent between the male and female support frames.’
‘Right. But … you remember being Bob, right?’
‘Of course. I recal al the incidents of our rst mission, right up until the moment you removed my chip.’
Liam wished he couldn’t remember that as wel .
‘Ugghh. Not something I’d like to do again in a hurry.’
‘You successful y preserved the AI. It contained six months of adaptive learning,’ she replied. ‘Both Bob and I are six months closer to ful y emulating human behaviour. We are both grateful.’
He shrugged modestly. ‘Oh, you know, it’s nothing. Just part of the job.’
‘I am able to kiss you,’ she said. ‘This would be an
‘I am able to kiss you,’ she said. ‘This would be an appropriate gesture of gratitude. I have data.’
She began puckering her lips and Liam felt that odd con icted sensation he’d felt after they’d rst arrived in 2015: a tingling excitement o set with a sense of revulsion.
Bob, in a girl suit … remember.
‘Uh … that’s OK, Becks. A thanks is more than good enough.’
‘A rmative. As you wish.’
‘Anyway, where the hel did you learn about kissing?’
‘I have a detailed description from a book I was reading while I was instal ed in the mainframe.’
‘Eh? What sort of books have you been reading?’
‘The book is entitled Harry Pot er and the Deathly Hal ows.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A novel. The digital le is in early twenty-rst century PDF format. The le’s original replication date is –’
‘Hold on,’ said Liam, stopping. ‘Do you have that le in your database stil ?’
She nodded. ‘My reading was interrupted. I wished to complete it. So I added it to my short-term cache.’
‘And would Bob also have the exact same le on the computer system?’
‘Of course.’
His mouth hung open. ‘There’s the code, then! Right there! That’s the code you could use! Isn’t it?’
Her eyelids ut ered as she processed the thought. ‘You Her eyelids ut ered as she processed the thought. ‘You are talking of a book code?’
‘That’s right, a Harry-Whatever-mijingamy book code.’
CHAPTER 41
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Howard noticed the young boy walking alongside him, sloshing through the warm seawater.
‘Hey,’ he said.
Edward smiled. ‘Hey. You always cal ed Leonard, or do your friends cal you Lenny?’
Howard shrugged; not a question he’d anticipated being asked. ‘Uh … mostly just Leonard,’ he replied. ‘My mom cal s me Lenny, but I hate that.’
‘I heard someone say your best subject is math.’
He nodded. ‘It was my –’ He stopped, inwardly cursing.
‘It … is … my favourite school subject. Always loved math. It’s like, wel , I dunno … I suppose it’s like a sort of poetry that only a few people get. If you know what I mean? It’s, like, exclusive.’
Chan nodded. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean. That’s why I like it. It’s something I know and other people don’t. It makes me feel kind of special, I guess. Maybe that’s why I don’t have any friends at school, cos they think I’m odd.’
Howard nodded. ‘Yeah, I guess I’m the same. A loner.’
He squinted up at the bright sun. ‘Never ever get picked for sports, because I’m the geek.’ He shrugged. ‘But that’s OK, cos I never liked sports anyway.’
OK, cos I never liked sports anyway.’
Edward nodded. ‘Me neither. It’s for jocks and dit oheads.’
‘Dit o-heads?’ Howard laughed. ‘I like it.’
‘You never heard that expression?’
Not in my time, he almost answered. But instead he just shook his head.
‘Hey!’ said Edward suddenly, and bent down to scoop up a curious twisted ammonite shel from the shingle.
‘See? There are even bigger ones of those,’ said Howard, nodding at some of the others, wading waist deep in the clear blue water, occasional y ducking down to pul shel s out of the water to admire them.
They walked on in silence for a while, going a lit le further into the warm water. Up ahead, leading the way and deep in conversation, Howard could see the two
‘agents’ – Liam and his robo-girl. He shook his head at the irony of it. Despite their turning up in 2015 to ‘save’ Chan, they were al on the same side real y, al trying to prevent the nightmare of time-travel technology from destroying the world. Same goal … di erent methods. He wondered how he’d never come across this agency in al the years of his campaigning, al the ral ies and protests he’d been to
… and no one, no one, had ever suggested, even as a joke, that there might be an agency out there actual y using time travel itself to combat the corruptive e ects of time travel. He wondered who was behind it, who’d set it up. Surely not the American government? Not any government, in fact. The international y agreed penalties for that were fact. The international y agreed penalties for that were severe. No politician would have the guts to risk having anything to do with time travel, because international law was brutal and strict on this mat er. It was an automatic death penalty for any involved. The great Roald Waldstein had been a powerful speaker on the horrendous dangers of it. A great man, an in uential man. Howard’s smal campaigning group had achieved far less. His group was lit le more than bunches of students in universities and col eges around the world.
But this secret agency, they were going about mat ers in the wrong way. At empting to repair history that had been damaged by careless travel ers? That was very much like trying to close the barn door after al the horses have bolted. No – worse than that … it was having to go out and hunt al those horses down then drag them kicking and screaming al the way back to the barn. On the other hand, his campaign group’s approach had been far simpler.
Destroy the possibility of time travel at its very root. Instead of closing the barn door, they were burning the cursed thing down with al the horses stil inside. He looked at Edward Chan. The boy smiled back at him then looked down at the lustrous pink and purple sheen of the shel in his hand. He stroked the smooth surface, then held it out. ‘You can have it if you want it, Leonard.’
Howard shook his head. ‘No, it’s er … no thanks.’
He has to die, you know that, Howard? Burn the barn, right? Burn it long before any horses get out. right? Burn it long before any horses get out. He realized he was delaying the necessary, put ing it o and put ing it o . And yet he knew it had to be done. In theory the future – the future after the year 2015 – must already be changing, must have changed by now. It would be a world where this boy vanished in an explosion and never got to ful l his destiny. It was surely a world where a man cal ed Roald Waldstein would never become the gurehead of an international campaign, never become a bil ionaire from al his other inventions, never become a household name. And, yes, this world would stil have its problems: dwindling supplies of resources, global warming, rising seas, migrating bil ions and dangerous levels of over-population. But … at least it would no longer have the ever-present threat of complete and ut er annihilation dangling over it.
He’d once heard a speaker at a ral y ask the audience what must lie beyond the dimension of space-time we al exist in. Is it Hel ? And to meddle with dimensions beyond what we know was surely no di erent from opening a door to the devil himself and inviting him right on in. He’d spoken of a medieval artist cal ed Hieronymus Bosch who’d claimed he’d once caught a glimpse of the devil and the underworld and painted endless nightmarish visions of what he’d seen. Perhaps, the speaker had said, perhaps what he’d glimpsed were dimensions beyond our understanding, a momentary rip in space and time. Howard shuddered at the thought.
You know the boy has to die, Howard. Burn the barn. You know the boy has to die, Howard. Burn the barn. Burn the barn. What are you waiting for?
He was so deep in thought he didn’t at rst register the voices from further up the beach. Voices crying out a warning, screaming a warning back at them.
Edward grabbed his arm and yanked him hard.
Howard’s thoughts were shaken away.
‘What the h–?’
‘RUN!’ screamed Edward, pointing his nger at something behind him. Howard turned round to see an odd-looking dark wave approaching him fast. Water rol ed down either side of an enormous grey hump, sliding up the shal ows towards him like a gigantic torpedo. He spot ed a large n at the top of the large grey hump –
large, very large … the size of a car, no, bigger – the size of a bus!
Edward was stil pul ing him back from the thing, trying to get Howard’s leaden ght-or-ight response to do something. Howard started to react, but far too sluggishly, too clumsily. He stumbled backwards over something in the thigh-deep water and an instant later was ailing on his back, his head underwater. Surfacing a moment later, splut ering for air, his legs scrambling to nd a steady footing below, al he could see now was an approaching dark cave, riding up out of the shal ow water at him like a freight train, a cave lined with stalactites and stalagmites of razor-sharp teeth and dangling tat ers of rot ing meat swinging between them.
‘OH NO!’ was al he could scream as the gliding mass of
‘OH NO!’ was al he could scream as the gliding mass of glistening grey hide nal y came to an abrupt rest and the cave, easily six foot across, snapped shut round one of his feet. He felt a vice-like grip on his ankle, the tough leather of his combat boots compressed agonizingly tight as something hard and sharp pressed from the outside. Then the beast began shaking its head vigorously from side to side and he knew bones had to be breaking and splintering in his ankle as he swirled through the water. Howard’s head was underwater. He felt pebbles, rocks and shel s grind painful y up his back, and knew that meant the creature was now manoeuvring itself back from the shal ows into deeper water.
He was holding his breath amid the tumbling
underwater chaos … and, for a eeting second, wondered why he was bothering to do so.
I’m gonna die. Surely bet er to breathe out now and drown than experience the agony of being ferociously dismembered by this thing?
Then, without warning the incredible pressure round his now-shat ered ankle was gone. He ailed with his arms to right himself, to nd solid ground on which to place his feet. He caught something with his hand, the rounded side of another ammonite shel . So that’s down. He tried to stand up and realized the creature must have pul ed him further out than he’d thought in those few seconds. Final y his head broke the surface and he realized the water was chest deep.
The air was thick with screaming voices and spray. The air was thick with screaming voices and spray. And the rst thing he saw was Chan, a few yards away, screaming abuse at the giant shark and jabbing his spear repeatedly at the creature’s nose. Its head snapped and swung from side to side, trying to get a grip on the fragile spear, trying to get past the spear to Chan, on whom it had decided to vent its frustration.
Howard waded through the water, painful y slowly, the chest-high sea in col aboration with the giant predator, wanting to slow him down. His one good foot kept slipping on the slimy rocks below, barely giving him enough purchase to make his way to shal ower water. Behind him he heard Chan stil hurling abuse and stil stabbing and prodding, and the hiss and roar of water turned frothy white by the enraged shark thrashing in the shal ows. Then he slipped again and fel under the water. He felt a hand under his arm, then another, lifting him clear again. It was the robo-girl.
‘Remain calm,’ she said emotionlessly.
‘What … about … Chan?’ he found himself gasping. She dragged him back to water shal ow enough for him to crawl on his hands and knees. Then she let him go and headed back into the sea.
He turned and sat in the gently lapping waves, exhausted and vaguely aware of the burning agony of snapped and twisted bones down at the end of his leg. He watched Becks splashing through the water towards where Chan was stil managing, incredibly, to keep the shark at spear’s length.
spear’s length.
That’s a very big sh, was the last coherent thought his mind managed to put together before the world seemed to slump over on to its side.
∗
Liam watched the young man as he came round. ‘Leonard?
How are you feeling?’
‘Hurts,’ he grunted thickly.
Becks leaned over him. ‘There are no broken bones, but your Achil es tendon has snapped and there is a signi cant contusion and several abrasions to your lower leg. This wil hurt, but it wil also mend.’
‘On the other hand,’ said Liam, ‘the bad news is your boot didn’t make it.’
Howard half smiled, half winced. A re crackled brightly high up on the beach, throwing dancing skeins of amber light and dark shadows across the shingle down to the softly lapping waterline.
Edward Chan joined them. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘You OK?’
Howard looked up at him. ‘You … you saved my life.’
Edward shrugged. ‘I just poked my stick at it for a while.’
‘My God, we were lucky,’ said Howard, wincing again as he adjusted his position.
‘No,’ said Liam sombrely, ‘no, we weren’t. Ranjit’s missing.’
Liam vaguely recal ed he’d been at the back of their party, wading slowly through the water, fal ing behind the others. They’d foolishly al owed themselves to become others. They’d foolishly al owed themselves to become strung out al along the beach, enjoying the tropical sea like holidaymakers. They’d al owed themselves to feel a false sense of security with the peaceful at sea to one side and a wide open beach on the other.
‘Poor guy,’ whispered Howard.
‘That shark thing must have got him rst.’
Liam wondered about that. He’d been about a hundred yards back. Surely they would have heard the rush of water as that shark slid out of the surf? Surely they would have heard Ranjit scream? He looked out into the dark and wondered whether it had been that shark, or perhaps it had been those dark shapes he thought he’d seen earlier this afternoon, scat ering to the ground and disappearing like ghosts as he’d turned back to look over his shoulder. Now, was that real? Did I real y see that?
‘We were lucky,’ said Kel y, ‘that it only got the one of us. I mean, did you see the size of that thing? Bigger than a kil er whale.’
‘This is the age of the big predators,’ said Whitmore.
‘Big ones. The golden age for the giant carnivores.’ He looked ashen-faced, shaken stil , even several hours after the incident. ‘And we’re prey.’
‘It’s not the golden age for much longer,’ said Franklyn.
‘If this is sixty-ve mil ion years ago, then we’re near the end of the Cretaceous era. Something happens soon on Earth that wipes out al the big species. Fossil hunters cal it the K–T boundary. Beyond that thin layer of sedimentary rock, you don’t nd dinosaurs any more. Certainly not the rock, you don’t nd dinosaurs any more. Certainly not the big ones.’
‘Good,’ said Laura.
‘The big asteroid?’ said Juan. ‘That’s what kil ed them al , right?’
Franklyn shrugged. ‘It’s stil debated. Could have been an asteroid, or a super volcano. Or it could simply have been a sudden climatic shift. Whatever extinction event happened, the large species were extremely vulnerable to it.’‘It won’t happen while we’re stil here, wil it?’ asked Jasmine. She looked as unset led and shaken as Whitmore. Franklyn snorted dismissively. ‘Unlikely.’
‘So,’ Edward mut ered softly. ‘Now there’s only fteen of us. If no one comes for us, we won’t make it, wil we?’
The others huddled around the re heard that and it stil ed their quiet murmurings until al that could be heard was the soft draw and hiss of the waves and the crackle of burning wood.
Becks broke the silence. ‘Leonard, I have constructed a pair of crutches for you.’
Howard eased himself up on to his elbows. ‘We’re stil going on?’
Liam nodded. ‘Yes, we’re nearly there.’ He pointed up the beach. ‘Another four or ve miles around this bay and we should be there. It’s our only hope … so we’re going on.’Whitmore nodded. ‘Right. We can’t go back now.’
Laura shu ed closer to the re, hugging her shoulders Laura shu ed closer to the re, hugging her shoulders against the cool night air. ‘This wil work, won’t it?
Somebody wil nd your message and they’l come for us?’
Liam grinned. ‘Sure they are. They’re already looking for us. And hopeful y leaving them this message wil help them narrow down their search. Trust me … it’s going to work out al right.’ He looked at Becks. ‘Right?’
She nodded, seeming to understand that the others needed to hear something positive and certain from them.
‘Liam is correct.’
CHAPTER 42
2001, New York
Sal looked at her. ‘How can you be so sure?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘I can’t be a hundred per cent certain. But look, if Liam and the unit survived the jump, I’m pret y sure that’s exactly what they’d do. I mean, that’s al they can do.’
Sal looked up from the mug of co ee in her hands, across the dim archway, il uminated by the zzing ceiling strip light, towards the shut er door. It was gone eleven now. By this time on any normal Tuesday, the three of them would have been set ling in for the evening: Liam on his bunk with his nose in a history book and a bowl of dry Rice Krispies on his chest and Maddy sur ng the Internet. But tonight she and Maddy were both up and sit ing at the kitchen table, waiting for midnight to come. Waiting for the ‘reset’. She could hear the softly growing hum of power being drawn in through the mains, building up and being stored in the capacitor. Come midnight they would feel an odd momentary sensation of fal ing as the time eld reset and took them back forty-eight hours to 12 a.m. Monday morning.
Maddy was certain, or at least working hard to give that impression, that immediately after the reset happened and impression, that immediately after the reset happened and they appeared in Monday one stroke after midnight, there’d be a welcome party waiting outside in the backstreet and very eager to meet them.
Who, though?
Maddy said that ‘secrets have a way of drifting up’. What she meant by that was that advance knowledge of a time machine appearing in New York in 2001 would surely ultimately end up in the hands of some shady government agency, men in dark suits. Something as important, something so profoundly monumental as that could only end up in the hands of secret service spooks. If that was the case … then, Sal hoped, Maddy was going to nd a way to cooperate with them to get Liam back. And then what? What exactly?
Interrogation? For sure. Because they’d sure as shaddyah want to know every lit le thing about this place and the machinery inside and how it al worked. They’d want to know every lit le thing. There’d be endless questions about the rest of this mysterious agency, how many others?
Where are they? Who’s in charge?
Sal real y wasn’t so sure she wanted to jump back to Monday and face that.
There was the other possibility, of course – that they jumped back and no one was there waiting for them. Maddy’s logic was quite black and white about this. Sal realized she’d thought this al through very thoroughly. If nobody was waiting for them, then that could only mean one thing. If there was nobody outside waiting for them, one thing. If there was nobody outside waiting for them, then Liam and the support unit had never survived the explosion. Or, if they had survived, then they’d been unable to get a message to them; they were lost in time for good, never to be seen again.
She looked at the digital clock on their kitchen table, red numbers that glowed softly and changed al too slowly. 11.16 p.m.
Oh jahul a … I rea-a-a-al y hate waiting.
CHAPTER 43
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Liam stared up at the steep slope in front of them, rising up from the turquoise sea and the narrow strip of gravel y beach. It was covered in canopy trees, dangling vines and the swaying fronds of ferns. Thick jungle once again. He’d grown used to the reassuring comfort of being out in the open, where he could see anything coming their way from afar.‘It’s just beyond that?’
Becks nodded. ‘A rmative. One and a half miles northeast of this point.’
The rest of the group were wearily bringing up the rear along the broad beach, none, though, daring to splash through the water this morning. Leonard was struggling at the back on the shingle with his crutches, but there was Edward and Jasmine helping him along.
‘I have the calculation now,’ said Becks.
‘What’s that?’
‘When in time we are.’
‘Oh.’ Liam arched a brow. ‘When did you do that?’
‘I set the routine running thirty-three hours ago, identifying and cataloguing each tachyon particle in our vicinity before and after the jump. Two bil ion, ninety-vicinity before and after the jump. Two bil ion, ninetythree mil ion, three hundred and twenty-two thousand, nine hundred and six particles before. And seventy-three mil ion, one thousand, ve hundred and seventy-two identi ed particles after.’
Liam rol ed his eyes. He didn’t need a blow-by-blow account of the maths. ‘That’s great. So … what’s the answer?’
‘With a constant particle at rition rate, my calculation is that we are located sixty-two mil ion, seven hundred and thirty-nine thousand, four hundred and six years into the past.’ She smiled proudly. ‘Accurate to ve hundred years either side of that date.’
‘Wel done, Becks.’ He watched the others slowly staggering across the shifting, clat ering pebbles. ‘So we have a date we can put in the message. And we can encode the message with your Harry Pot er book code?’
‘A rmative.’
‘And of course the date and location of the eld o ce.’
He drew in breath through his teeth. ‘Jay-zus, this does real y feel like we’re meddling with time in a big way.’
‘We are,’ she replied.
‘We’ve just got to gure out the best way to ensure our get me out of here note lasts … sixty mil ion whatever years.’
‘Sixty-two mil ion, seven hundred and thirty–’
He raised a hand to shush her. ‘To ensure it lasts a long, long time.’ He picked out Whitmore and Franklyn walking side by side comparing some of the shel s they’d col ected. side by side comparing some of the shel s they’d col ected.
‘I just hope those two fossil geniuses know where best to leave our message.’
In the distance, four or ve miles down the beach, he saw several long necks hastily emerging from a cluster of jungle and out on to the beach, a smal herd of those alamosauruses hurrying out into the open.
Something just spooked them over there. Didn’t it?
He watched as they thundered along the beach, kicking up a trail of dust in their wake.
His gaze rested on Edward and Jasmine supporting a limping Leonard up the shingle. They nal y caught up with the rest of them gathered at the foot of the steep slope of jungle.
‘We’ve just got to hike over that, ladies and gents,’ said Liam, ‘and we’re there.’
Franklyn was exhausted, out of breath and dripping with sweat. He was pret y sure the climb up this steep slope of jungle was one or two degrees short of ful -on vertical rock climbing. He wondered how the huge canopy trees with their mushroom-like roof of leaves were managing to keep a purchase on the craggy rock sides.
The others seemed to be faring bet er than him, even that poor kid, Leonard, who was hopping and clat ering up awkwardly, his bad leg dangling behind him. But then Franklyn was carrying twenty more pounds in weight than them, most of it round his middle. ‘Puppy fat’ he preferred to cal it, in a vain hope that come col ege it was al going to cal it, in a vain hope that come col ege it was al going to magical y disappear and the trim athletic body of sports jock was going to emerge. He’d stil be a geek on the inside, though. But a cool jock on the outside. A smart sports jock.
Now there’s something you don’t see every day. He was so pleased with that observation that he misplaced his step and stumbled to the ground, barking his shin on a rock. ‘Ow!’ he hissed.
‘You OK, man?’ asked Juan, six yards ahead and above.
‘Yeah, I’m f–’ His rucksack slid o his shoulder as he picked himself up and started sliding down the slope. ‘Oh no!’ he mut ered, watching it bounce o a tree trunk and continue its rol ing, bouncing, tumbling descent. ‘Just great,’ he sighed. ‘Now I got a go down, get it and climb this bit al over again.’
‘I’l tel the others to hold up while you get your bag,
’kay?’
Franklyn nodded a thanks and began his descent. He could see his yel ow rucksack down there, swinging from a low branch. Good, it wasn’t going any further, then. Several minutes later he was nearly there, pushing his way through the large fronds of a fern on to a smal level clearing of dried cones and needles and soft soil. Across the clearing – on lit le more than a wide ledge – was his bag, stil swinging from a shoulder strap tangled round the broken stump of a branch. If it hadn’t caught there, it would have rol ed over the edge and he’d be backtracking another tiresome ten minutes’ worth of climbing al the another tiresome ten minutes’ worth of climbing al the way to the bot om.
He stepped across, unwound it from the stump and put the straps over both shoulders this time, determined not to lose it again. He turned round to begin his ascent once more when his eyes picked out something on the ground: the familiar shape of a human footprint in the dry soil. One of theirs, but either side of it he saw three smal dents
– the distinctive marks of a three-toed creature. He stooped a lit le lower to get a closer look.
My God. It looked just like the tracks he’d seen al around that carcass they’d discovered a while back. The dawning realization came suddenly and his mouth al of a sudden felt tacky and dry.
We’ve been fol owed.
He knelt down and traced another three-pronged footprint in the ground with his nger. And another. And another.
We’ve been fol owed … al the way from the camp. It was then that he heard the soft rustle of dislodged leaves, something emerging from the foliage on to the ledge behind him.
‘Oh boy,’ he whispered.
CHAPTER 44
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Broken Claw could sense the new creature knew they were there; his nasal cavity picked out the faint smel of fear coming from it, a chemical cocktail of sweat and adrenaline, not so di erent from the large plant-eaters. The new creature had cleverly spot ed their tracks. The new creature had nal y realized it was being stalked. Maybe now was the time to know a lit le more about these strange pale beasts. His soft bark ordered the others to remain where they were for now, out of sight. The new creature was holding one of those sticks-that-catch in one of its pu y pale hands. He’d watched one of these creatures fend o a giant sea-dwel er yesterday with one of those sticks. So he eyed it warily as he stepped low under the sweeping fronds of a fern, under the branch from which the new creature had moments ago retrieved something bright and colourful and emerged over the rocky lip of ground to the smal level clearing. That salty smel of fear grew suddenly much more powerful as the new creature turned slowly round to face him. Broken Claw rose from his crouching posture on al fours, up on to his hind legs, to stand ful y erect.
It fears.
It fears.
So close now, he could see the new creature more clearly: the eyes, curiously large, behind rounded shiny transparent discs. Its face, al loose pale esh, unsculpted by muscle or sinew or bone carapace. It made noises with its mouth, noises that sounded so unlike al the other beasts in the river val ey they cal ed home. Noises, in fact, that didn’t sound too unlike the simple language of coughs, grunts and barks Broken Claw’s pack used. Franklyn in turn studied the creature that had just emerged. It had a body shape he could best describe as halfway between one of the smal er therapod species, and
… wel , and a human. But incredibly thin, almost birdlike in its agility. A pair of long thin legs hinged backwards like a dog’s legs, meeting at a bony, very feminine-looking pelvis thrust acutely forward. A tiny waist beneath a protruding rib cage, a curved, knobbly spine that hunched over and ended with a delicate tapering neck supporting an elongated skul . Apart from the distinctive head, seen from a distance, and if one squinted a lit le, it could almost pass as a hominid – human-like.
‘Oh my … m-my God,’ he whispered.
It cocked its head, a head that eetingly reminded Franklyn of a hot-dog sausage, long and bone-smooth, at one end a lipless mouth ful of rows of lethal-looking teeth. Above the mouth were two holes that suggested a nasal cavity around which esh puckered and pul ed as it silently breathed, and above that two reptilian yel ow eyes that seemed to sparkle with a keen intel igence. The that seemed to sparkle with a keen intel igence. The thing’s skin was a dark olive green, that seemed to pale to an almost human pink colour around the vulnerable bel y and pelvis.
The creature’s jaws snapped shut and opened again, and it made a whining noise that reminded him vaguely of the contented murmuring a baby made after a feed. It sounded almost human. And those curious, intel igent, eyes, studying him as intently as he was studying it. It made another noise, grating, slightly deeper this time. Beyond the teeth, he could see a black tongue twitching and ut ering and curling, like a restless animal in a cage, experimenting with di erent shapes to produce di erent sounds.
Did it … did it just mimic me?
‘Hi,’ said Franklyn.
The long head tilted to one side, like a dog listening for its master’s voice. The mouth opened again, and the tongue rol ed and curled. ‘Ah-eeeee,’ was the noise that came out, lower in pitch now, lower than a baby and almost matching the timbre of Franklyn’s as yet unbroken voice.
He felt some of the terror replaced with the slightest ush of excitement.
It’s trying to communicate.
‘Hi, my name’s Franklyn,’ he said again, louder, bolder, slower.
That long head tilted over to the other side now, the gesture almost comical. One of its long arms, muscular, gesture almost comical. One of its long arms, muscular, lean and ending with three digits that curled into lethallooking long curved serrated blades, exed in front of it. Is that a hand signal?
Franklyn at empted to duplicate the gesture, bringing his short pudgy hand up before his face and curling his ngers in the same way. The creature snorted air out of its nostrils and clacked its teeth. He wondered if that was the creature laughing at his at empt.
Suddenly, he heard the crack of twigs, and the clat er of dislodged rocks; something coming down the slope above. Becks leaped out of the foliage on to the ground between them, landing in a ght-ready and perfectly balanced stance. She spun round to face the reptilian hominid. ‘Run,’ she said calmly as she crouched ready for action, one of their crude jagged metal hatchets in one hand, a spear in the other.
Franklyn was frozen in place, unsure what to do. The creature had dropped down low, on to al fours, its elongated banana-like skul tilted back and resting ush in the spinal dip between two protruding shoulder blades. It hissed and barked and a swarm of others began to emerge over the lip of ground that sloped steeply down to the bay below.
‘RUN!’ screamed Liam, tumbling out of the foliage clumsily on to the ground beside Becks. ‘Run, for Jayzus sakes, RUN! ’ he shouted, get ing up and readying his spear.
Franklyn’s moment of indecision passed as he took in Franklyn’s moment of indecision passed as he took in the crawling carpet of dark olive bodies slowly, warily gliding on al fours across the clearing towards them like a deadly lava ow. He turned, grabbed a branch and pul ed himself up the slope and into the jungle, panting with panic and e ort as he and his yel ow rucksack quickly disappeared through the thick green fronds.
‘What?’ hissed Liam. ‘Oh, sod this! I thought it was just the one of them!’
The creatures were spreading out around the clearing, at empting to ank them, encircle them.
‘Recommendation,’ Becks said, turning to look at him,
‘leave!’
Liam could hear the sound of footfal s from above – the others. He couldn’t tel if it was the sound of them coming down to help, or scrambling up the slope to get further away.
‘Uh … right, OK. You going to be … er … al right?’
Becks ignored his stammered question as she swivel ed the hatchet in her right hand with the grace of a martial arts master. The yel ow-eyed creatures had moved too quickly, encircling them so that Liam already had no choice but to stay. He backed up against her until their shoulders were touching.
‘Oh … boy … oh b-boy … I’m real y n-not … uh, oh God …’
‘Stay close to me,’ Becks ut ered over her shoulder.
‘S-sure … and w-what are y-you going to –?’
Becks was already in motion. He glanced round to see Becks was already in motion. He glanced round to see her leap forward, swinging the spear like a baton. The sharp end punctured the ank of one of the hominids and with it stil lodged between two ribs she e ortlessly icked it o its feet. Liam backed up, keeping his spear aimed at the creatures closing the gap in front of him. Becks stepped forward again with the grace of a bal et dancer, the jagged hatchet ickering and ashing in the blur of movement. It caught the long clawed digits of one of the creatures and they spun in the air spraying droplets of blood in messy arcs.
In front of him, one of the creatures made a sudden lunge for Liam, hoping to catch him o guard as he backed up in Becks’s wake. He caught the movement in his peripheral vision and had only the time to swing the spear tip round towards it before he felt the impact rat le down the frail bamboo shaft.
He turned to see the creature’s deadly sickle-shaped claws ailing inches from his face and the teeth in its long skul snapping and grating and dripping spit le-strings of saliva. It was impaled on the bamboo, but so very far from incapacitated and quite enraged.
‘Oh Jay-zus! I got one skewered!’
Becks was busy.
He held on to the rat ling spear as the creature thrashed and drummed and swung and slowly, eagerly pul ed itself further down the shaft, thick gouts of its dark blood running on to his hands. ‘Help!’ he screamed. He could see one of the other hominids lowering, He could see one of the other hominids lowering, coiling, ready to leap on to him, when the air was split with a child-like shriek from one of them. In an instant, the beat of a heart, the dark olive-coloured bodies snaked, scrambled and swarmed with incredible speed towards the lip of rocky ground and out of sight into the jungle slope below.
Gone. Just like that.
Except for the creature stil struggling halfway down his spear. A sickle claw swiped across his upper arm, cut ing through the material of his shirt and digging into his muscle with the ease of a butcher’s blade through tenderized beef.
‘Gah!’ Liam bel owed. ‘Help me!’
Becks was there in the blink of an eye and with a blur of movement swiped the hatchet across the creature’s elegant neck. It froze in shocked realization of its fate. The long head tilted for a moment like a cocked gesture of curiosity, then swung backwards on to its hunched spine, almost completely decapitated yet stil at ached to the body by a frayed strip of exposed pale pink tendon. It col apsed a second later, pul ing the spear out of Liam’s trembling hands.
They both stared down at the tangle of lean grey-green limbs and bony protrusions, and the rhythmic jet of almost black spurting gobbets of blood across the oor of dried pine cones and needles. One of its legs stil twitched and exed; a post-mortem response.
Liam looked up at Becks. She had a spat er pat ern of Liam looked up at Becks. She had a spat er pat ern of blood across her pale face and chest and her normal y expressionless cool grey eyes were wide and wild. But that passed in an instant as arti cial intel igence regained control of her face. She regarded him calmly.
‘Are you unharmed, Liam?’
Liam looked down at his bloody arm, cut deep, but nothing arterial going on there. He was vaguely aware that he was in a state of shock as he said, ‘Can I be put back on the Titanic, please?’
CHAPTER 45
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Liam and Becks emerged at the top of the steep hil twenty minutes later, a bald outcrop of rock with a view down al three sides to the tropical sea far below. Liam col apsed on to the rocky ground.
‘W-where are they?’ asked Franklyn, looking past Liam towards the edge of the sloping jungle. ‘Are they coming?’
‘They are no longer pursuing,’ answered Becks.
‘My God, you’re wounded!’ cried Laura, dropping down beside him and ripping a strip of cloth from his shirt to use as a bandage.
‘What the hel happened back there?’ asked Kel y, undoing his loose tie and passing it to Laura to use as a tourniquet. He looked at Franklyn, stil gasping from the exertion of climbing up the last half a mile of jungle. ‘He’s just been jabbering to us something about a load of creatures jumping him.’
Liam nodded. ‘Yeah.’ He pul ed a plastic bot le out of his backpack and chugged the last of his water. He pumped air in and out of his lungs for a few moments, gathering enough pu to be able to say something more.
‘Yeah … we got at acked al right. Lots of them … dozens of ’em.’
of ’em.’
‘Dozens of what?’ asked Whitmore.
‘A species of pack hunter,’ said Becks.
Whitmore went pale. ‘Oh God, don’t tel me there are raptors?’
‘Worse,’ said Franklyn. ‘Much worse.’ He sat down next to Liam, took o his glasses and wiped the fogged lenses of his spectacles. One of the lenses was laced with a spider’s web of cracks.
‘They’re not like anything we’ve ever seen,’ he began, careful y rubbing dry the fractured glass. ‘No one’s ever come across fossils of this … come across anything like this species.’
Whitmore squat ed down opposite the boy. ‘Tel me, what’s back down there? What did you see?’
Franklyn shook his head. ‘I … I real y don’t know. They’re … they’re human-like and raptor-like.’ He looked up at the teacher. ‘They’re unlike anything … anything, you know?’
‘Not a sub-species of therapod?’
The boy shook his head vigorously. ‘No … no, de nitely not. Maybe mil ions of years ago there’s some kind of shared ancestry, but these things … they’re just … they’re
…’ He was fumbling for words, for some way to describe them.
‘Unique?’ said Liam. He winced as Laura pul ed the dressing tight one last time and nished a knot.
‘Yes.’ Franklyn nodded, put ing his cracked glasses back on. ‘Unique. That’s it. They must be some kind of on. ‘Unique. That’s it. They must be some kind of evolutionary dead end. A form of super-intel igent predator.’
Kel y stepped forward. ‘That doesn’t make sense, Franklyn. If they’re, as you say, super-intel igent, they’d have thrived. We’d have found their fossils everywhere, surely?’
‘How intel igent? What level of intel igent are we talking about?’ asked Laura.
‘Oh, they’re smart,’ said Liam. ‘Very smart.’ He looked up at the others. ‘I think I saw them back on the big plain at the same time Becks punched that dinosaur on the nose. I looked back behind us, just as that stampede was happening … and I think I saw them. Like a whole pack of monkeys … in fact that’s what I thought I saw –’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Whitmore. ‘The only mammals alive now are the size of shrews.’
‘They’re not mammals,’ said Franklyn. ‘They’re reptilian, al right.’
‘Like I say,’ continued Liam, ‘I thought they were monkey-like. But then I wasn’t sure what I saw, because they were gone in a ash. Just went to ground when they saw me looking at them.’
‘They’ve been fol owing us al the way from our camp,’
said Franklyn. ‘Did you see their tracks?’
Liam shook his head.
‘Three prominent depressions at the end of a long foot?’
Liam recal ed the sickle claws, four on each hand, three on each foot. ‘Yes … that’s right.’
on each foot. ‘Yes … that’s right.’
‘Those same tracks were around that carcass … I’m sure of it. That was their kil .’
Liam looked down the jungle slope at the broad curve of the long bay glimmering in the daylight. And, far o , the broad expanse of the open plain. Beyond that, lost beyond the shimmering air and the fogging of twenty miles’ distance, would be the low hummock of a slope and a cli edge, and their jungle val ey beyond.
‘They must have been watching us,’ he said, feeling his skin cool and the hairs on his arm stir. ‘Watching us and fol owing us ever since then.’
‘But that was … like … over a week ago,’ said Juan.
‘Nine days,’ Becks added.
Juan made a face. ‘Al that time?’
‘They’ve been studying us,’ said Liam. ‘Learning about us, so they have. Working out how much of a threat we are to them.’
‘Yes … I think you’re right.’ Franklyn pul ed himself up and studied the fringe of jungle several dozen yards down the slope from them. ‘They’re curious. That makes them intel igent. Maybe almost as intel igent as us.’
‘A species of dinosaur as intel igent as us? Come on, Franklyn, that’s –’
‘They’ve got a language! I heard them communicate.’
Liam nodded. ‘He’s right. When they were surrounding me and Becks, there was some sort of talking going on among them.’
‘And one of them tried to communicate with me …
‘And one of them tried to communicate with me …
before you and robo-girl arrived. It was trying to speak like me!’
‘This is just crazy!’ said Whitmore. ‘There’s no record of any species, or any similar species with the cranial capacity for a brain big enough to develop a spoken language … or able to make human-like vocal sounds.’
‘But that’s the thing, Mr Whitmore, just because no fossil of these things has survived, doesn’t mean they didn’t exist.
’ ‘The lad’s right,’ said Kel y. ‘Don’t palaeontologists say we’ve only got an incomplete record of prehistoric times?
That there are large gaps in our knowledge?’
Whitmore rubbed his beard and stared down at the fringe of jungle. ‘Wel , then, that’s one huge goddamn gap out there, isn’t it?’
They were quiet for a while, al staring at the nearby canopy trees, and the dark forbidding undergrowth beneath, imagining eyes staring out from the gloom back at them.
‘What do we do now, Liam?’ asked Laura.
He pul ed on his bot om lip in thought. ‘We carry on with the plan.’ He turned away from the jungle he’d emerged from minutes ago and looked down the slope on the other side of the peak. Below he could see the pale apron of a smal sheltered sandy cove nestling at the bot om of the ridge and another equal y high ridge on the far side, like the protective embracing arms of a rocky giant. He could see the twinkle of a smal stream giant. He could see the twinkle of a smal stream meandering down through thickets of bamboo and reeds and spil ing out on to the cove. It was an inviting, secret bay of turquoise-green water that lapped along the crescent of a pale cream-coloured beach. In another time, another place … a secluded tropical paradise. A picturebook pirates’ cove.
‘Is it down there?’ he asked Becks. ‘The place we need to be?’
‘A rmative. That is it.’
‘Yes,’ he said, nodding his head rmly, hoping he looked every bit the decisive leader. ‘We can be down there in less than half an hour. We’l make a camp on the beach and be sure to have a huge re going. Hopeful y that’l keep those things at bay. And we’l have half of us sleeping, and half watching, and we’l do that in shifts.’ He looked at Becks again. ‘We’l make this message, so we wil , and tomorrow we’l plant it.’
‘How are we going to do that?’ asked Kel y.
Liam was about to answer that he wasn’t sure yet, when Jasmine replied. ‘Clay.’
The others looked at her.
‘Clay,’ she said again. ‘If we could nd some we can make a tablet. You can write your message on it then we can bake it hard in the re.’
Liam stroked his cheek thoughtful y. ‘Right, yes … good idea. That’s what we’l do. So? Any questions before we get moving?’
‘What about them things back down there?’ asked Juan
‘What about them things back down there?’ asked Juan with another pointed glance towards the jungle.
‘Wel , I suppose they’ve learned something about us, right?’
The others looked at each other, not quite sure what Liam meant by that.
‘They’ve learned we can kil them.’ He gestured at Becks. ‘And they’ve learned our robo-girl is not to be messed around with, so they have.’
Becks frowned indignantly at that. ‘My ident. is Becks.’
He shrugged. Too tired and winded to apologize. ‘Right, then … I suggest we get going.’
CHAPTER 46
2001, New York
The alarm clock on the table between them was showing 11.45 p.m. Maddy noticed Sal’s eyes nervously glancing at it. ‘Fifteen minutes to go.’
‘I’m a bit scared,’ whispered Sal.
If Maddy was being honest, she would have admit ed she was a lit le jit ery too. Instead she smiled, reached across the table and grasped Sal’s arm. ‘It’s going to be ne, Sal. I promise.’
‘Maybe I should go get Foster’s gun from the back? You know? Just in case somebody unfriendly turns up.’
‘Real y?’ Maddy cocked an eyebrow. ‘Do you think that’s going to be sensible? We might be answering the door to a backstreet ful of very excitable armed men in suits and dark glasses.’
‘You think it’l be like that?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘I real y don’t know what’s going to happen, Sal …’
If anything at al …
‘But,’ she continued, ‘if a whole bunch of secret service types turn up, we’re not going to achieve much standing there with one gun between us, are we? I’m sure they’l come prepared, if you know what I mean?’
come prepared, if you know what I mean?’
‘I guess so,’ mut ered Sal, her head drooping down to the table, a fold of her dark hair opping over darker eyes.
‘How come you’re so calm about this?’
Calm, am I? But then she realized she actual y did feel calm … No, not calm … resigned … resigned to whatever history was rol ing up through the aeons to meet them in a few minutes when the archway’s bubble reset. She’d gured this out yesterday while she was out there anxiously looking for Foster; there real y was nothing much they could do other than wait and react to whatever turned up. Wait. That’s it. Wait until a ripple or a time wave arrived, or, as she hoped, a message. Then, and only then, could they do anything at al useful.
‘I’m calm, Sal … because, I dunno, because it’s not in our hands now. Because we have to just wait and see. No point worrying about what’s out of our hands.’
That sounded lame. But it was al she had right now.
‘But, if it’s bad guys, Maddy … if it’s bad guys who want to get their hands on the time machine, what are we going to do? We can’t just let them.’
‘I’ve got that covered.’
‘How?’
Maddy smiled. There was something she’d managed to get right. ‘I’ve instructed Bob to lock down the computer system if he hears me say a codeword out loud.’
‘Right.’ Sal nodded, silent for a moment. ‘But … but won’t they have computer experts who could hack their way in and, I dunno, deactivate that command or way in and, I dunno, deactivate that command or something?’
‘Maybe, eventual y. That kind of hacking takes a lot of time. And they won’t have enough time to do that.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s under orders to trash absolutely everything if he doesn’t hear from me again.’
‘Huh?’
‘If he doesn’t get a second password from me within six hours, he’s under instructions to go completely mad and wipe the hard drives clean and send a power surge through the displacement machinery’s circuits and fry them. There’l be nothing left but frazzled silicon and garbage-l ed drives if they try anything funny with us, Sal.
’ Sal nodded, regarding Maddy with renewed respect. ‘Oh jahul a, that’s clever, Maddy.’
Maddy shrugged. ‘I saw it in a lm once. It worked in that – don’t see why it shouldn’t work for us.’
‘You’re a good planner,’ said Sal. ‘I know you think you’re a bit rubbish, and I know you blame yourself for the explosion … but I don’t know anyone else who could have picked up al that you have so quickly.’ She glanced away from Maddy, self-conscious, icking her fringe behind one ear. ‘I’m just saying, that’s al … you’re pret y good at this.’
‘Thanks, Sal.’
They watched another minute vanish on the clock.
‘We’l see soon enough. If it’s bad guys out there and
‘We’l see soon enough. If it’s bad guys out there and they real y want to get their grubby paws on our tech, then they’re going to need us, aren’t they?’ Maddy took a deep breath, feeling the tickling sensation of growing anxiety claw its way up her spine as the clock ickered to 11.47
p.m. ‘And they’re freakin’ wel going to have to be real nice about it too.’
CHAPTER 47
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Broken Claw cradled the organ in his hands, stil , cold and lifeless now; its colour had drained from a vibrant red to a dul purple as the sun slowly sank in the sky. Now the sky was dark, a half moon bathing the dark jungle with a quicksilver light.
He stood where the new creatures had been just hours ago. Evidence of their presence was everywhere in the form of footprints in the soil, droplets of dried blood on the rocks and boulders and the smel , their unique smel of fear thick on every surface. They had waited here for a while. And they had been so very frightened. The new creatures fear us.
And yet Broken Claw had been so certain up until now that it was his pack that needed to be afraid of them. The others were looking at him, waiting for him. He looked down at the organ in his hand, al that remained of his pack-mate, the mother of many of the young males before him. She would have led them al if Broken Claw was to die before her. The wisdom of age was more than enough to make up for her smal er frame … and no young buck would have chal enged her. Unlike the other simpleminded animals in these lands with their crude pack minded animals in these lands with their crude pack hierarchies that relied on the brute strength of an alpha male, Broken Claw’s extended family understood the power of wisdom.
But now she was dead. Her slim neck had been almost completely severed and she’d had a wound through the chest cavity that would almost certainly have been fatal anyway.
They had returned to the ledge to nd her body stil warm, but her life gone. And so they’d consumed her, torn the esh from her bones in ragged strips – skin, muscle tissue, organs – al of her stripped down to bloodied bones. None of her to be wasted. She was loved too much to leave her esh for smal er scavengers to gnaw at. Her heart was his, though, and his alone.
Broken Claw had cradled it now for hours, unwil ing to let go of the last thing of her. But now was the time. Now, as he stared down through the dark night to the cove far below and the ickering orange ower on the beach surrounded by those pale creatures.
His serrated teeth tore a chunk from the purple organ and he vowed as he chewed on the brous tissue that every last one of those new creatures would die. He would be sure to stare closely into their eyes as his claws dug deep into their chests and pul ed the pumping source of their life out.
The others began to wail and mew softly, young males grieving at the loss of their mother, as Broken Claw placed the rest of the organ in his mouth and bade farewel to his the rest of the organ in his mouth and bade farewel to his lifelong partner. He turned to the others and silenced them with a soft bark.
We do not need to fear new creatures.
The others understood this too.
They are as plant-eaters, harmless without their sticksthat-catch. And they were careless, foolish creatures that often placed these lethal tools on the ground and walked away from them, unaware that without them their clawless hands and smal , even, white teeth made them as vulnerable as freshly born cubs.
Broken Claw watched their distant movements on the beach, il uminated by the yel ow ower. Of course they al had to die to avenge her … but also to be sure his kind were the only intel igent pack hunters in these lands. To al ow these pale things a chance to breed and increase their number would be foolish.
He opened his mouth and his black tongue curled and twisted as he softly tried to reproduce again the strange sound the short fat creature with ginger hair and those strange eyes had made. Broken Claw’s throat gargled and whinnied, and his tongue shaped the sound into something that sounded, to his recol ection, to be a very passable facsimile.
‘Aye … ammmm … Fanck … leeeennn …’
CHAPTER 48
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
The morning sun was already warm on his back and shoulders as Liam poked at the smouldering remains of their camp re with his spear, careful y probing the aking ash remains of branches for what he was looking for.
‘Do be careful,’ said Jasmine, standing beside him.
‘They’re brit le when they’re stil hot.’
‘Al right,’ he said, going about it more careful y. Presently, the blunt end of thick bamboo cane hit something hard: a dul thunk.
‘I got one.’ He careful y pushed the ash out of the way and traced a rough rectangle outline, something approximating the size of a brick. ‘It looks like it survived the cooking without cracking.’
Using a stful of waxy fern leaves as an oven glove he reached down and pul ed it out, then quickly dropped it on the soft sand. ‘Ouch! Stil bleedin’ hot!’ He squat ed down beside it, gingerly wiping ash away from the rustcoloured surface of re-cooked clay. The ne lines of let ers and numbers were clogged with ash. The others gathered round and stared down at the smal oblong tablet lying on the beach.
‘My God, look! It total y worked!’ ut ered Laura.
‘My God, look! It total y worked!’ ut ered Laura. The let ering was there to see, clear, unmistakable.
‘Of course it did,’ replied Jasmine. ‘I know what I’m talking about. Me and my mom make ceramic jewel ery al the time. We sel it on eBay.’
Liam leaned over and blew at it, the ash ut ering out of the inscribed lines and curls of his handwriting in lit le clouds.
Take this to Archway 9, Wythe Street, Brooklyn, New York on Monday 10 September 2001.
Message: -89-1-9/54-1-5/76-1-2/23-3-5/17-8-4/7-3-7/5-8-3/12-6-9/238-1/3-1-1/56-9-2/12-5-8/67-8-3/92-6-7/112-8-3/234-6-1/45-7-3/30-62/34-8-3/41-5-6/99-7-1/2-6-9/127-8-1/128-7-3/259-1-5/2-7-1/69-15/14-2-66. Key is ‘Magic’. Whitmore was reading it over Liam’s shoulder. ‘You think that book code of yours is going to work? I mean, I don’t know what book you’ve used but I know every book has di erent editions. You know that, don’t you? And the page layouts and numbers change from edition to edition. Are you using some kind of internal agency manual or something?’
Becks answered. ‘It wil work. My duplicate AI is working from the same database.’
‘Magic?’ said Juan. ‘Is that some kinda clue for which book it is?’
Liam nodded. He looked at Becks. ‘Do you think Bob wil understand that clue?’
She pursed her lips and shrugged – yet another teenage gesture she seemed to have picked up in the last fortnight gesture she seemed to have picked up in the last fortnight from the students. ‘I am unable to give you an accurate answer to that question, Liam.’
‘Wel , put it this way … would you get it?’
Her eyelids ickered. ‘I have thirty-one thousand listings in my database against the word “magic”.’
‘Ah, Jay-zus,’ mut ered Liam, frustrated. ‘Maybe we should have put more thought into the clue there. Maybe that one word on its own isn’t going to be enough for Bob to –’‘Saleena Vikram wil understand,’ said Becks. She looked at Liam. ‘As “Bob” I discussed the book with her.’
Liam snorted. ‘You’re kidding me? You can actual y discuss literature?’
‘I told her I very much enjoyed the magic in Harry Pot er.’
Whitmore stood up straight and put his hands on his hips. ‘This is a joke, right? You’re not seriously tel ing me your super-secret-ultimate-time-police agency uses a kids’
book as a code key?’
Liam and Becks both looked up at him and nodded.
‘Jesus!’ Whitmore shook his head. ‘What kind of a Mickey Mouse out t are you?’
‘Mickey Mouse?’
Liam waved at Becks to be silent. ‘It’s what works, Mr Whitmore!’ he replied, surprised with himself at how angry he sounded. ‘It’s what works … that’s what counts!’
Whitmore was a lit le taken aback by Liam’s
uncharacteristic outburst. ‘Wel , it’s just … it just seems so, uncharacteristic outburst. ‘Wel , it’s just … it just seems so, I don’t know, a bit …’
‘Amateur,’ chimed in Franklyn. ‘We were thinking you guys had some sort of already-organized code system. You know? Like proper secret-agent types do?’
‘Yeah … don’t mean to be dissin’ you guys an’ al ,’ said Juan, ‘but it does look like you makin’ this stu up as you go along.’
‘Look,’ said Liam. ‘I’l not lie to you … I’m quite new to this time-travel thing myself. And this is certainly the rst time I’ve gone back to dinosaur times. So, I suppose if it looks to you like me and Becks are not working from some … from some sort of manual, wel … you’d be right.’
He stood up, brushing ash from his hands. ‘But I’l tel you this much for nothing: the agency has saved you many times over. And the thing is each time it does that for you, each time it’s saved history and the world around you …
wel , it’s happened. And you al go on with your lives happily never knowing how close it’s al come to disaster.’
Liam pressed his lips together. ‘Me and Becks here have saved you once before.’ He half smiled. ‘A certain Hitler chap who won a war instead of losing it. Now that was a ne bleedin’ mess, so it was. But we managed to x it up again. So wil you not give us some credit here? We’re not completely useless, al right?’
‘What about your agency?’ asked Kel y. ‘Who are they?’
Liam was about to answer when Becks grabbed his arm to stop him.
‘Lemme guess,’ said Kel y sarcastical y, ‘classi ed data.’
‘Lemme guess,’ said Kel y sarcastical y, ‘classi ed data.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Liam, ‘that’s how it is. We return you to 2015, then the less you know about us, the bet er. But I’l tel you this, though … they’re organized and they’ve got the best technology out there; computers and … and
“robots” like Becks and oh … loads of other stu . So, look
–’ he smiled – ‘you’re in good hands.’
They looked at him with an unreadable mixture of expressions.
Come on, Liam … be decisive.
‘Right, then, enough prat ling like old shwives. We have a job to do, so we have. These tablets, Franklyn? Mr Whitmore? Where exactly do you suggest we go and place them?’
They both looked at each other, an exchange of absentminded gestures – Franklyn pushing his cracked glasses up his nose, Whitmore scratching at his scru y beard – and a mut ered exchange of ideas.
Final y Franklyn turned to them. ‘I suggest we embed a couple in the beach. Dig a hole, deep … as deep as you can. And the rest –’ he turned and nodded towards a nearby thicket of bamboos and reeds – ‘that freshwater stream. There’s silt banks and a bunch of marsh either side of it. I’m pret y sure that’s how they describe the fossil bed in Dinosaur Val ey, that it was once … marshy.’
Liam looked at Jasmine. ‘And these clay tablets wil last sixty-ve mil ion years?’
She shook her head. ‘Uh, wel , no … I never said they’d last that long.’
last that long.’
Franklyn shook his head. ‘You real y don’t know a great deal about fossils, Liam, do you?’
Liam hunched his shoulders. ‘Nope, Franklyn, I don’t. But you do. So why don’t you tel me how this works, then?’
Franklyn sighed. ‘They’l most likely break up long before there are even monkeys on planet Earth, let alone Homo sapiens. But the impression they leave behind – like a cast or a mould on the sand – on the silt, which eventual y wil become a layer of sedimentary rock, that’s the fossil.’ He o ered Liam a patient if somewhat patronizing smile. ‘Not those tablets. They’l be long gone dust.’
Liam nodded thoughtful y. ‘Al right, then. So now I know … strikes me that it makes no real di erence –
there’s stil something left behind that a person can read, right?’
Franklyn nodded.
‘Good, so best we get started. The sooner we’re done, the sooner we can leave.’ He turned to address them al . ‘I don’t know about you but come sundown I’d rather be camping out on that big, very wide beach than down here.’
‘With those things out there?’ said Whitmore, looking up the jungle slopes surrounding them. ‘Sure … get ing out of here sounds good to me.’
CHAPTER 49
2001, New York
‘Three minutes to go,’ said Sal.
‘Three minutes,’ Maddy echoed. They could both hear the machinery below the desk beginning to hum noisily as it sucked energy greedily from their mains feed. Not for the rst time, Maddy wondered who paid the electricity bil for their archway. It had to be astronomical, the amount they used.
She smiled at her dumbness. Yes, of course, no one paid any bil s. As far as the world outside was concerned, as far as their neighbour – the car mechanic in the archway near the top of their lit le backstreet – were concerned, this archway normal y sat vacant with a ripped and gra ticovered sign pasted on the rol er shut er outside o ering three thousand square feet of commercial oor space at a reasonable rate.
Except of course, for a Monday and Tuesday in September when, to anybody who bothered to notice, it would appear three young squat ers had decided to move in, only to vanish again on the Wednesday.
‘Oh,’ said Sal, ‘I forgot … I saw a funny thing the other day.’‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah, in a shop nearby. A junk shop. Wel , not funny real y. Just a coincidence.’
‘What?’
‘A uniform, a steward’s uniform … from the Titanic. Just exactly like Liam’s.’ Sal shook her head. ‘Isn’t that weird?’
‘Seriously?’
‘The lady in the shop said it wasn’t a real one, though. Just a costume from a play. But, stil , kind of funny. I suppose I could buy it for Liam as a spare.’
‘I’m sure he’s in no big hurry to go back to the Titanic, you know? Given what he’d have to face.’
Sal’s smile quickly faded. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I suppose he wouldn’t … none of us, real y.’
The numbers on the clock ickered and changed. Two minutes left.
Maddy real y could have done with Foster sit ing right here beside them. Calm, relaxed, with a reassuring halfcocked smile on his old wrinkly face. Skin that looked like weathered parchment, skin that looked like it had seen way too much sun –
… I wouldn’t mind feeling the sun on my face …
Foster’s last words. He’d said that the morning he’d taken her out for co ee to say goodbye.
‘Sun on my face,’ she ut ered under her breath. Sal cocked an eyebrow. ‘Uh?’
… I guess I wouldn’t mind feeling the sun on my face whilst I enjoy a decent hot dog …
whilst I enjoy a decent hot dog …
That’s exactly what he’d said, wasn’t it? One of the last things he’d said. That’s what he fancied doing with whatever time he had left to live. Sun and a decent hot dog. With al these skyscrapers, she knew there was only one place you could count on un-obscured sunlight in Manhat an, sun … and, yes, hot dog vendors a-plenty. One place and one place only.
‘I think I just gured out where Foster’s gone,’ she ut ered.
They watched the clock’s red LEDs icker to show them 11.59 p.m.
‘Where?’
Maddy stood up and pushed the chair back from the breakfast table with a scrape that echoed across the archway. ‘I’l uh … I’l explain another time. We’re about to have guests.’
Sal stood up and joined her in the middle of the oor, both facing the shut er door, and counting down the last sixty seconds as, behind them, the deep hum of machinery began to build to a nal zzing crescendo.
The strip light above them began to icker and dim.
‘Wel , here goes nothing,’ said Maddy, reaching out instinctively to hold Sal’s hand.
CHAPTER 50
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
‘Do you think it’s deep enough?’ asked Liam. Becks squat ed down beside the waist-deep hole in the mud, and studied the oozing sides, slowly sliding downwards, and the bot om, already beginning to l up around Liam’s ankles with cloudy water. ‘I do not know,’
she said.
‘Don’t know, is it? Great.’ He wiped at his sweating brow, smearing mud across his forehead. ‘Wel , who knows how deep is deep enough? May I have the tablet?’
She passed it down to him.
He turned the brick of clay over in his hands and studied the inscribed let ers and numbers.
So, my lit le silent messenger, you go get us some help, al right?
He bent down and placed the brick writing-side down in the cloudy water and gently pressed it deep into the mud. ‘We’re counting on you, Mr Tablet, counting on you to do your very best for us. Last as long as you can, al right? And, like my Auntie Loret a used to say, you be sure to make a good impression.’ He looked up at Becks with a grin plastered on his face amid the mud. ‘Uh? Make a good impression? See what I did there?’
good impression? See what I did there?’
She stared down at him, grey eyes cool y analytical. ‘A pun,’ she replied. ‘A single word with multiple meanings dependent on contextual framing.’
‘Aye, a pun … you know? It’s meant to be funny.’
She frowned for a moment, and then her face suddenly creased with an insincere mirth and she bel owed a mock laugh. He cringed at the sound of it.
‘Jay-zus, Becks, if it’s not funny … just don’t laugh. I’m serious – it’s embarrassing.’
She stopped immediately. ‘A rmative.’
Liam pul ed himself out of the hole as the wet sides of it began to slop down into the bot om. He and Becks scooped up handfuls of mud and silt and helped the selfl ing process until al that was left was a barely noticeable mound on the stream’s bank. Liam produced a length of bamboo and plunged it into the top and tore a ragged strip of neon green material from the bot om of his shorts. He tied it to the bamboo stalk. ‘And that’s so we’l nd it easy enough when we come back for it.’
Becks nodded. A part of the plan she’d insisted was necessary: to return to this time-stamp once everything else had been put right and retrieve every single one of the ve tablets that were being put into the ground. Liam looked downstream. The smal trickling artery of fresh water twisted and curled out of sight beyond a thicket of reeds. ‘I wonder how the others are doing?’
Kel y stood up straight and placed his hands on his tired Kel y stood up straight and placed his hands on his tired back. Their two tablets were now dug deep into the ne sand of the beach at either side of the smal cove, both marked with bamboo ags and strips of material ripped from the sleeve of his o ce shirt.
‘Done!’ He smiled at the others. There was a muted cheer from Juan, Laura, Jasmine and even Akira, a girl as shy as Edward, self-conscious about her thick accent and faltering English.
He looked up the beach towards the line of reed thickets and clusters of bamboo, and the smal delta of fresh water and silt that spread out and trickled down a fan of ow-worn grooves in the beach, down into the warm salty sea.
‘The others should be done pret y soon,’ he said. ‘Then we can head back.’
Laura’s gaze drifted to the steep peak of jungle they were going to have to ascend. ‘I wonder if those things are out there stil .’
Juan looked up. ‘We got our weapons, and we got robo-girl. We’re going to be al right.’
‘Maybe we’re safer now than we were,’ said Kel y. ‘One of them was kil ed trying to at ack us. So maybe they’re more wary of us now.’
Laura tightened the grip on her spear. ‘Yeah … I guess you’re right.’
Franklyn nished piling a smal cairn of stones around the base of the bamboo stake in the ground and looked up. base of the bamboo stake in the ground and looked up. Whitmore was leading the other two: Edward and his seemingly adopted big brother, Leonard, a hundred yards down towards another hump of silty bank they’d identi ed earlier as a good place for their second tablet.
‘You coming, Franklyn?’ the teacher cal ed out.
‘Just a sec!’ he replied. The bamboo stake kept opping over to one side and the rocks were very nearly, but not quite, holding it up. ‘I’l join you in a second!’ he cal ed back, reaching for another large river-smoothed stone. He heard it then. A soft, muted cry. Like the whimpering of a smal child. He froze, listening for it over the stirring hiss of the reeds and the chuckle of the stream. And there it was again, a lit le louder, a lit le clearer. It sounded like someone in pain.
‘Hel o?’ he replied. ‘Who’s that?’
One of the girls perhaps? Maybe slipped on a wet rock and broken something?
‘Jasmine? Laura?’
The cry again, pitiful, wretched and insistent. It seemed to be coming from the reeds. ‘Akira? Is that you?’ He stepped towards them and fancied he saw someone shifting on the ground at the base of the reeds. He pushed his way in.
‘What? Have you slipped? Hurt your –’
The form slithered back from him through the reeds and out of sight, moving in a fast – too fast for human – way. It was then his peripheral vision picked out eyes watching him intently from among the reeds to his right. It shifted him intently from among the reeds to his right. It shifted forward, silently revealing itself a mere couple of yards from him: distinct yel ow forward-facing eyes at the front of an elongated, tapering skul that sloped back over hunched bony shoulders and a hunched spine. The curious shape of its skul vaguely reminded him of the aerodynamic helmets worn by speed cyclists, or downhil skiers at the winter Olympics, only much longer, like the aliens in those DVDs his older brother kept watching over and over. It scrutinized him, perfectly stil , perfectly poised. And then its scalpel-sharp teeth parted and he saw its black tongue coiling and unfurling like a snake.
‘Aye … ammm … Fanck … leeennnnn …’ it hissed softly.
My God. This creature – he realized now, the very same reptilian hominid he had faced back up the hil side in the jungle yesterday – had remembered his name, had remembered their eeting moment of communication, the exchange of a spoken word. Something that wasn’t going to happen again on this world for tens of mil ions of years. What’s more, this thing had actual y the voice-box and the oral dexterity to reproduce a human word!
‘Yes!’ he whispered excitedly. ‘Yes … that’s me!’ He gestured to himself. ‘My … name … is … Franklyn.’
Its long tapered head tilted to one side and silently it glided a step forward out of the reeds towards him. In his rucksack, nestled at the bot om beneath the last couple of parcels of gril ed sh meat wrapped in waxy leaves, was his phone stil with some charge left on it. leaves, was his phone stil with some charge left on it. Enough, he hoped, just enough to take a few photographs and maybe a short recording of this thing actual y speaking. He eased the rucksack o his shoulders.
‘I’m just going to get something,’ he said softly, soothingly, moving slowly. ‘OK?’
The creature remained perfectly stil , yel ow eyes curiously watching his every move. He unzipped the bag and reached inside, the rank smel of sh spil ing out. The skin aps around the hominid’s nasal cavity began to twitch.
He can smel the food. Change of plan. Franklyn grasped one of the packages, pul ed it out and unwrapped it. ‘Here you are … look! Food.’ He held the smal hunk of barbecued esh out in one hand towards the creature. Further o , he could hear the voices of Whitmore and the others echoing back over the reeds, less than a hundred yards away. He was torn between hoping they’d turn up and scare the thing away, and hoping they didn’t. He could cal out to them. But then what might that trigger? An at ack? Or perhaps it would vanish for good, never to be encountered again.
He realized that would be a tragedy. Because this …
thing, this species, like every other species of dinosaur, just wasn’t going to make it. The world of dinosaurs hadn’t much time left in geological terms. A thousand? Ten thousand years? Maybe tomorrow it was going to happen: a mass extinction event, either an asteroid or a megavolcano was going to choke the world and kil every land-volcano was going to choke the world and kil every landbased species larger than a dog. And this intel igent species, so close in many ways to human, closer in some than man’s own ape ancestor, was going to vanish along with al the other dumb dinosaurs. They were going to vanish without leaving a trace, would never be known about, never leave any fossil markings, never have a Latin name or be exhibited in a museum or discussed by palaeontologists. And that was the cruel est irony. Because here was something that, given just a few more mil ion years …
… could have been us.
The dominant intel igence, a reptilian version of Homo sapiens.
‘My God … you … you’re incredible,’ he whispered. The creature was now just a couple of yards from him, yel ow eyes on the hunk of meat, crouching low, its riband-spine-lined back looked so human, like the back of some size-zero catwalk supermodel or some lean gymnast.
‘… fankk … leeeen …’ it ut ered again.
Franklyn realized he had to take a picture. The species deserved some evidence, at least one shred of visual evidence, that it had once upon a time existed. He gently placed the meat on the ground in front of him then delved back into his rucksack for his mobile phone. The creature advanced another foot and then strained its long neck and curiously elongated head to sni the meat. One slender arm swept forward and a hand with three lethal-looking sickle-shaped claws tapped it, rol ed it over lethal-looking sickle-shaped claws tapped it, rol ed it over
… then casual y pushed it aside.
Its head cocked; its nostril aps puckered. And then Franklyn realized the creature wasn’t the slightest bit interested in the stale odour of the mud sh. It was smel ing him, reading his odours like a witch-doctor reading bones, like a medium reading the creased palm of a hand.
‘I-I mean no harm. I … just …’ Franklyn stut ered nervously.
Its jaw snapped open, and the tongue inside twisted and curled. ‘No harmmm …’ it mimicked.
‘Y-yes … friend … f-friend,’ said Franklyn, tapping his chest. It was now so close he could have reached out and stroked the bone-hard carapace of the front of its skul . He could feel warm, fetid pu s of air coming from its nasal cavity.
Franklyn had the mobile phone in his hand now. His eyes stil on this thing’s reptile eyes, he fumbled with the touchscreen menu and nal y got it into digicam mode and pressed the RECORD but on.
‘A species,’ he said softly, panning the cel ’s camera up and down the beast, ‘p-possibly a remote ancestor of the vvelociraptor … or more likely the smarter troodon.’ He hated that his voice was shaking like some nervous girl’s. If this was going to be a few seconds of footage that was going to make him famous … he wanted to sound like a pro, like a true hardcore adventurer, not some kneetrembling geek. ‘This species … is q-quite incredible. trembling geek. ‘This species … is q-quite incredible. Capable of copying a human v-voice …’
The hominid’s mouth suddenly snapped shut with a loud clack of teeth and then the cluster of reeds began to rustle with movement al around him.
Franklyn looked up. ‘Oh God … n-no …’
CHAPTER 51
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Liam heard it. A brit le scream, long and ragged and then suddenly silenced. ‘Did you hear that?’
Becks nodded. ‘A rmative.’ She straightened up. ‘The hominid pack hunters may have returned. We should rejoin the others immediately.’
Liam grabbed his spear. ‘Come on.’
They splashed across the shal ow stream, kicking up fans of water, and then along the bank on the far side. No more than two hundred yards closer to the beach, that’s where Whitmore and the others had been left to place their tablets. That seemed to be where the scream had come from. Liam couldn’t tel if that one long cry had been a male or female voice, but it had rat led with horror and ended in a way that hadn’t sounded good. They splashed back across the water again to avoid another thicket of reeds as the stream weaved around a smooth boulder the size of an automobile. A minute later, up ahead, he could make out the others gathered in a group, standing closely together and studying something on the ground.
‘What happened?’ he cal ed out.
None of them replied. They looked up at him with None of them replied. They looked up at him with faces as pale as bed linen. Kel y and his group had heard the cry too and had come up from the beach. They must have arrived there only a minute or so earlier.
‘What happened?’ he cal ed out again as he and Becks splashed across the stream one last time and nal y joined them on the silty bank.
Then he saw it for himself.
Blood.
Blood everywhere, and a few tat ered shreds of clothing that he recognized as belonging to Franklyn. But no sign of the boy himself. ‘Oh no,’ he ut ered, blessing himself absent-mindedly. ‘That isn’t real y …?’
Whitmore nodded. ‘Franklyn’s. He … was … we were just down there,’ he ut ered, pointing downstream. ‘Just there … just b-beyond those reeds.’
‘Didn’t hear anything,’ said Howard. ‘Or see anything. Just heard him scream. We came up here and … he was gone. Just gone.’
It was Kel y who decided to say rst what they were al thinking. ‘Those things … it’s those things, isn’t it? They’ve damn wel come after us.’
‘We don’t know that for sure,’ said Liam. ‘There are other predators.’
‘Oh, we know,’ said Laura. She passed Liam a mobile phone, dappled with droplets of congealing blood. On the smal screen, a shaky low-resolution image looped over and over: nothing but the bright pale blue sky, and then the jerky image of something stepping over just the once. the jerky image of something stepping over just the once. But that was al he needed to recognize it: lean, almost skeletal, and that long tapering skul . The image was pale sky again, occasional y shuddering as the camera was knocked, and through the smal speaker the sound of growling, snapping teeth and the frenzied noise of something being torn to pieces.
Liam swal owed, his mouth and throat suddenly dry. He felt his face drain of blood and blanch, just like theirs now, pale as a ghost. ‘We’re leaving,’ he said quietly. ‘Leaving right now.’
‘Uh … I left my bag at the beach,’ said Juan.
‘Forget the bloody bag!’ snapped Liam. He glanced at Becks, ready to bark at her to be quiet should she decide to caution him about potential contamination. But she seemed to understand. Instead she pointed out which way they needed to go. Up the steep slope, thick jungle. ‘I wil lead the way,’ she said. ‘Recommendation: you should al remain close.’
‘Oh, don’t you worry about that,’ ut ered Liam under his breath. He pul ed one of their homemade hatchets out of his bag and hefted his spear in his other hand. ‘Everyone ready?’
The others nodded, al of them with a weapon of one sort or another in their hands. None of them keen to step back into the thick canopy of leaves and vines and dense clusters of fern leaves that could quite easily conceal death, but even less keen to remain here a moment longer.
‘So, what about Franklyn?’ asked Chan in a smal voice.
‘So, what about Franklyn?’ asked Chan in a smal voice. No one seemed to want to answer that question. The boy looked up at Howard. ‘We’re not looking for him, Leonard?’
Howard answered. ‘He’s gone, Edward. He’s gone.’
Becks nodded. ‘Correct. Information: approximate calculation – at least ve pints of blood on the ground. Franklyn cannot be alive.’
‘Come on,’ said Liam, resting a hand on Edward’s shoulder. He looked up at the sloping jungle ahead of them. ‘We should go.’
CHAPTER 52
Clay tablets, ve of them, buried deep in mud and sand, silently count the passing of years. Above, as they slumber in their own dark tombs, tides rise and fal , and individual layers of mud dot ed with the decaying bones of generations of creatures accumulate like the rings of a growing tree.
Two hundred and seventy-six thousand, nine hundred and two years after a group of Homo sapiens placed them in the ground, the planet Earth shudders under the impact of a rock the size of Manhat an travel ing at forty thousand miles an hour. A wave of incinerating energy spirals hundreds of miles out and tidal waves engulf mil ions of miles of lowlands across the world. The sky turns dark for the best part of a decade. A ten-year night in which almost al of life on land vanishes, except hardy smal rodents from which those very same Homo sapiens wil one day descend.
The giants of the plains die o quickly, rst the planteaters, then the predators. A holocaust fol owed by a nuclear winter. Massive extinction on an unimaginable scale.
Yet through this ve tablets lie stil , and dark and oblivious.
In the aftermath of the asteroid impact, the Palaeogene period begins: a vast stretch of time, forty mil ion years in period begins: a vast stretch of time, forty mil ion years in which mountain ranges are born, live and die. A period in which a vast inland sea riding up a backbone of hil s that wil one day be cal ed the Rockies recedes, surrendering ground that has only ever known the darkness of a seabed, ground that wil one day have names like Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico.
The dinosaurs are long gone, now nothing more than fossils waiting silently, like the tablets, for the constant at rition of erosion, the movements of ground, to nal y push them near the surface and sunlight, again. Above, in the world of daylight, a brand-new ecosystem exists, a world ut erly rewrit en. It is a cooler one than the tropical world of the dinosaurs, and the smal hardy rodents have grown, evolved, diversi ed and cover the land with a mil ion di erent mammal species, many of which a travel er from the present might even begin to recognize.
Near the end of this era, one of the ve tablets, now no more than an impression on the surface of a stratum of sandstone, is lost forever when a minor earthquake fractures and grinds the strata to loose gravel. The subtle etchings of words and numbers imprinted from the longgone clay tablet, erased. Four companions, however, live on, stil separated after so many mil ions of years by the same distance that existed between them the day they were buried, mere hundreds of yards apart.
Around twenty mil ion years pass and the Palaeogene Around twenty mil ion years pass and the Palaeogene period becomes the Neogene. The world grows cooler, and for the rst time, for a long time, ice-caps begin to form at the polar north and south. Species of grass colonize the land in a way that prehistoric ferns could only dream of, and smal four-legged mammals that wil one day look very di erent and be known as ‘bu aloes’ graze blissful y upon it.
Around seven mil ion years ago, the hard-rimmed hoof of one of these smal grazing creatures catches the tip of a broken slab of sandstone, and pul s it out of the ground. It lies there in the darkness of night, moonlight picking out strange and subtle pat erns of raised markings on one side. But the roaring of a night predator spooks the herd. As one, they surge away from the sound, and the night is l ed with the rumble of thousands of hooves on hardbaked soil. By dawn the curious slab of sedimentary rock is no more than dust and fragments, destroyed by thousands of trampling beasts.
Three silent witnesses remain as endless aeons pass in darkness, like the soft ticking of an impatient clock. Above ground, one species of rodent that took to the trees during the early Palaeogene, has nal y ventured down to the ground once more to forage for food as the Neogene era begins. It is larger, with a more muscular frame and a head larger in proportion to its tree-climbing ancestors. It’s a species that wil one day, in another more mil ion years, be known as ‘ape’.
be known as ‘ape’.
In 11,000 BC, early one morning as warm sun spil s across a plain, a young Indian brave careful y scouting the grazing bu alo ahead runs his hand over the coarse grass and dislodges the sharp corner of a stone. A chunk of int emerges from the orange soil, a int, he notices, with curious markings on it.
For a moment the markings incite his curiosity. They look deliberate. But then his mind moves on to the size of the int itself. He can see how three separate tamahaken blades could be struck from it, and he thanks Great Father Sun for the nd.
Now only two silent messengers remain.
In 1865, a young Confederate lieutenant on the run from Union forces, leading a ragtag band of soldiers unwil ing to accept that the civil war is over, rests his aching back against a rock. With tired eyes, too old for such a young face, he watches the languid river in front of him as his ngers twist through coarse grass. And, yes, they nd the sharp edge of a stone. Before the war he was a student of history, and the faint lines of writing on the stone fascinate him. He puts the curious piece of rock in his saddle-bag and resolves to take it to a professor of natural history he once knew in Charleston when he eventual y can. But later that same day the Union cavalry regiment nal y catches up with the lieutenant and his men. And before the sun has set they – soldiers and o cer
– lie in a shared unmarked grave not far away from the Paluxy River.
Paluxy River.
And so just one last tablet remains.
CHAPTER 53
2 May 1941, Somervel County, Texas
Grady Adams watched his brother goo ng about in the water below with growing irritation. ‘Watch it, Saul … you gonna scare o al the sh!’ His brother ignored him and surface dived into the sedate Paluxy River.
Grady ground his teeth. His younger brother could be a complete ass at times. No, strike that … al the time. He set led back on his haunches, his toes curled over the lip of tan-coloured rock overhanging the river. The stone was hot against the bare skin of his feet, egg-frying hot, that’s what Pa would say. The sun had been beating down on it al morning, and the pool of water that had dripped o him from his last swim in the river half an hour ago had long since evaporated.
He looked up at a nearly cloudless sky and realized there wasn’t going to be any momentary respite from the heat of the sun. To his left, several dozen yards along the ledge of rock, a smal , withered cypress tree was clinging to the side of a large craggy boulder. He could see it was casting a smal pool of shadow, at least big enough for a part of him to keep out of the sun.
He stood, grabbed his shing rod and walked careful y along the narrow ledge. Careful y, because from time to along the narrow ledge. Careful y, because from time to time, right near the edge, bits of the sandstone rock broke away and splashed into the river a yard or so below. That had happened to Grady before, scratching up his hips and chest as he’d slid into the water.
Saul came up again, noisily splashing the surface of the river, no doubt scaring any remaining sh wel away from the oat bobbing nearby.
‘Saul! For crying out loud!’
His brother gave him a toothy grin and paddled across to the far bank, deliberately kicking his feet on the surface and making as much of a ruckus as he could.
Grady hunkered down in the shadow, his back now against cool rock, and to his right a dried earthy wal of orange soil and gnarled roots from the smal tree poking out from it. He prodded at the loose layers of soil, light and dark, like the layers of some fancy sponge cake. He’d once found a Paiute tamahaken blade among a bank of earth like this. Those layers folded away such fascinating things along this river. He remembered there was that team of men last summer, digging around along portions of the riverbank, looking for monster footprints in the rock. Dinosaur tracks, that’s what they’d said they were looking for.
Grady and Saul had seen a few in their time along here, big ones like he’d imagined an elephant might leave, and smal ones too, three deeper dents and a shal ow one. Saul even claimed he’d once seen a human footprint in the rock, just exactly like a shoe. Sil y ass was always coming rock, just exactly like a shoe. Sil y ass was always coming up with doofus nonsense like that.
Grady knew no cavemen wore shoes back then in dinosaur times.
The people up in Glen Rose had started cal ing this place Dinosaur Val ey on account of the men and women from the museums and stu who came digging for fossils last year. He smiled at that as he tugged at one of the twisted roots. It sounded kind of cool … Dinosaur Val ey. He could imagine some of the gigantic beasts he’d seen in picture books striding across their Paluxy River, walking up and down the riverbanks, their long necks craning down to drink from the river …
Grit and dry soil tumbled down on to his arm. ‘Ouch!’
He let go of the root and it sprang up, releasing another smal avalanche of loose clay-like earth. And then he saw it, half hanging out, and resting on a coil of tree root that looked like a pig’s tail. A palm-sized slate of shale. He reached up for it and it fel heavily into his hands. For a moment, as he stared down at the almost triangular shape, he wondered whether it might just be another one of them tamahaken heads. But it didn’t have the tel tale signs of being worked on, shaped by some skil ed hand.
It was just a plain ol’ slice of rock.
He held it in his throwing hand, wondering how many bounces he’d get from skimming it across the river. It was nice and at … a good spin on the throw and maybe he’d count seven, perhaps eight, before it set led and sank. He count seven, perhaps eight, before it set led and sank. He stood up, saw Saul on the far bank sunning himself on a dry boulder. ‘Hey! Saul!’
His brother’s head bobbed up. ‘What?’
‘I got me a skimmer. Reckon I get an eight with it?’
‘Nah,’ he cal ed back, ‘cos you throw like a girl an’ al .’
Grady shook his head and sighed. His brother real y could be annoying. ‘Wel , why don’tcha just look and learn, you foo-bat!’
He cupped it in his palm, wondering which side was at er … and then turned it over.
CHAPTER 54
2001, New York
On Sunday 9 September 2001, Lester Cartwright, a smal narrow-shouldered man facing his last ve desk years before his long-awaited retirement, went to bed with his plump wife. A man who, if you asked him to be honest, would admit to being a lit le bored with his unchal enging life. His job – yes, it might sound interesting if he was al owed to talk about it – was as a projects budget assessor for a low-pro le US intel igence agency. But, in actual fact, despite the intriguing sound of working for a secret service, the work simply involved crunching numbers and balancing costs and expenditures. He might as wel have been doing that for Wal-Mart, or McDonald’s, or some carpet store … the job would have been exactly the same. Not exactly where he’d hoped to end his career when he’d rst joined them back in the 1960s, a young man ready to serve his country in the eld. A young man ready to kil or be kil ed for Uncle Sam. Now he was an old man who rubber-stamped expense forms.
That night he went to bed after walking their dog, Charlie, climbed into his pyjamas and picked up a Tom Clancy spy novel, hoping to enjoy at least a few aimless thril s today before turning the light out on his bedside thril s today before turning the light out on his bedside table.
Later, as he slept, change arrived in the form of a subtle ripple of reality. A wave of reality systematical y rewriting itself, a wave of change that had started in 1941 … with a young boy’s discovery of a strange rock beside a river in Texas. A boy who turned over a rock and saw something curious.
Lester’s boring life in that moment of darkness was replaced in just the blink of an eye, with a far, far more interesting one.
‘Sir! Sir!’ Knuckles rapped gently against the car’s rear passenger window. Lester Cartwright stirred, his mind had been o again, considering the incredible, the impossible. Only, it isn’t impossible, is it, Lester?
He looked out of the window at Agent Forby, dark glasses, a suit, crew-cut hair and a face that looked like it had never told a joke while on duty. Lester wound his window down an inch. ‘Yes?’
‘Sir, it’s time,’ said Forby.
Lester looked down at his watch. Three minutes to midnight. Dammit … he must have been napping again. Get ing too old for something like this.
‘Forby, the area’s completely secure?’
Forby nodded. ‘We have a two-block cordon set up. Police and state guard are manning those. The Wil iamsburg Bridge has been closed and al civilians have been evacuated from the perimeter.’
been evacuated from the perimeter.’
Cartwright nodded. The cover story had been an easy no-brainer to come up with: a bomb threat. American civilians seemed to react very wel to that. ‘So, we’re certain we have just agency personnel within?’
Forby nodded. ‘A hundred per cent, sir. Just us guys.’
Cartwright looked out of the window past Forby’s hunched form. The Wil iamsburg Bridge towered over them, the nearby intersection was deserted and there, fty yards away, was the entrance to the smal backstreet running alongside the bridge’s brick support arches. My God … nal y. This is it. This is nal y it. He felt his chest tickled by but er y wings and the short hairs on the back of his neck rise.
‘Very wel .’ He opened the car door and stepped out into the warm evening. ‘Then let’s begin.’
Cartwright led the way across the quiet road, lit by several zzing street lights and the intermit ent sweep of a oodlight from a helicopter holding position high up in the sky. Apart from the far-o whup-whup-whup of its rotors, this three-block-wide area of Brooklyn was ghostly quiet.
There was a barricade across the entrance to the backstreet, manned by more of Cartwright’s men. No soldiers or police this close to the target, on Cartwright’s insistence. Only personnel he trusted within the perimeter. Only personnel he’d recruited himself into this smal covert agency, an agency he and his men referred to as the Club.
Club.
He nodded at them as they raised their guns and let him through. He looked down the narrow cobbled street, lit ered with garbage, an abandoned skip halfway along. Good grief, I feel … like a kid.
Al of his professional life had been leading up to this one moment, ever since he’d been quietly headhunted from the FBI to come and work for the Club. Forty years of knowing.
Lester Cartwright began to make his way down the row of archways, past the rst one, clearly being used by some one-man auto-repair business.
When he’d rst joined, his superior had been prepared to reveal only some of the facts: an incredible nd in a place cal ed Glen Rose, Texas – a nd that had major national security implications. That was al he got for quite a few years. But time passed, and Lester gradual y climbed several ranks, nal y becoming the senior serving o cer in the Club. His departing boss had handed him the complete dossier on his very last day, handed it to him with eyes that looked like they’d been staring far too long into an abyss.
‘Do me a favour, Lester,’ he’d said. ‘Sit yourself down and drink a nger of bourbon before you open this le, al right?’
‘Sir?’
‘You’re about to join a very, very smal group … those that know.’
And it was a smal group.
And it was a smal group.
Presidents had been briefed – Roosevelt, when the news of the artefact had rst been unearthed. Then Truman, then Eisenhower. But they’d stopped brie ng presidents when that sil y fool Kennedy had threatened to go public on it. That was the year after Lester had joined the Club, the year of the Dal as incident. A very messy business. But the Club had a responsibility.
They hadn’t bothered to tel presidents since then. Cartwright passed the third and fourth archways, both open-fronted and unoccupied. He could see needles and bot les back there in the darkness. His men had checked in there for vagrants and unearthed only one grubby, stinking and ut erly bewildered alcoholic. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest as his feet slowly brought him up outside the metal rol er-shut er door of the fth archway. Forty years he’d known of a thing cal ed the Glen Rose artefact.
But only for the last fteen years had he known exactly what it was.
Figuratively speaking, a message in a bot le, with a date on it. A bot le that couldn’t be opened until a certain date. He looked down at his watch and saw that that certain date was a mere forty seconds away.
There hadn’t been a single solitary night during the last fteen years that he hadn’t lain in bed and wondered what they’d nd inside this address. He’d been down this street on a number of occasions and looked at that corrugated metal; he’d even been inside and looked around on several metal; he’d even been inside and looked around on several occasions. Empty, unused.
But now, nal y, there were occupants inside. Occupants from – his heart ut ered and his breath caught as he considered the phrase – another time.
Cartwright instinctively reached into his suit jacket for the service-issue rearm he kept there as he looked at his watch and realized that after forty years of waiting and preparing he was nal y down to counting o the last ten seconds.
‘So … this is it,’ he ut ered.
The second hand of his watch ticked past midnight and al of a sudden he thought he felt the slightest pu of displaced air against his face.
He leaned forward, bal ed his st and knuckled the shut er door gently.
CHAPTER 55
2001, New York
Maddy looked at Sal. ‘Oh my God! You hear that? That was a knock, wasn’t it?’ She hadn’t ful y expected to be right, that come the stroke of midnight and the reset there would actual y, for real, be a knock on their door. The rol er shut er rat led again, and they heard the mu ed sound of a man’s voice outside.
‘So we’re going to open it, right?’ whispered Sal.
‘I … uh … yes, I guess we’ve got no choice.’ She stepped forward towards the but on at the side and pressed it. With a rat ling whirr of a winch motor begging for oil, the shut er slowly rose. Both girls looked down at the ground, at the gradual y widening gap, and the soft glow of the street lamp outside creeping across their stained and pit ed concrete oor.
Two shoes. Two dark-suited legs. Final y the person outside ducked down slightly to look in, and his wide eyes met theirs.
‘Hel o there,’ said Maddy, raising a limp hand. ‘We were
… kind of expecting you.’
The shut er rat led to a stop and the man stared at them for a long while in silence.
‘I …’ he started, his voice croaky with nerves. ‘You …
‘I …’ he started, his voice croaky with nerves. ‘You …
but you’re just kids.’ He narrowed his eyes, looking past them at the dim interior. ‘Are there any others here?’
‘Just us, I’m afraid,’ said Maddy.
He looked at her; his old creased face seemed to be struggling to cope with the moment. ‘Are you two … are you f-from the future?’ he asked.
Sal looked at Maddy and she nal y nodded her head.
‘You’ve got a mil ion questions you want to ask us, I’m sure,’ Maddy addressed the old man. ‘And we’re prepared to answer some of them. But … you have something, right? Something for us?’
He eyed her cautiously. ‘Perhaps.’
‘A message?’
He ignored the question. ‘Are you time travel ers?’
‘I won’t answer anything until you answer me. Do you have a message for us?’
He took a step forward, squinting at the machinery on the far side of the arch. He nodded towards it. ‘Is that some sort of time machine?’
She bit her lip. ‘I’m not saying anything until you answer me.’
‘It is, isn’t it?’ He smiled. ‘My God … this is incredible.’
‘Please!’ cal ed out Sal. ‘Something brought you to us. It’s a message from our friend, isn’t it?’
The old man turned away from them and barked an order down along their backstreet. A moment later Maddy could hear the slap of boots on cobblestones. She retreated from the entrance and into the arch, taking several steps from the entrance and into the arch, taking several steps towards the computer desk.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the old man. He reached into his suit jacket and pul ed a handgun on them. ‘Please remain perfectly stil . Do not touch anything! Do not do anything!’
Half a dozen men emerged from the backstreet, al of them wearing bio-hazard suits, faces hidden behind tinted fascias of plastic. Al of them armed with what looked like television remote controls.
Oh no. Maddy felt lightheaded. This isn’t good.
‘We’re going to talk,’ said the old man gently. ‘But we’re going to talk safely away from this place. Please,’ he said, beckoning for them both to come forward, out of the archway and into the street, ‘step forward, away from the equipment.’
Now! You have to do it now!
Maddy spun to face the computer desk. ‘BOB!
OMELETTE!’ she screamed, desperately hoping the desk mic across the archway had managed to pick up her voice. The last thing her conscious mind registered was every muscle in her body contracting with a sudden jolt, and then keeling over on to the hard oor, her forehead smacking heavily against the concrete.
Cartwright watched in silence as the older of the two girls was wheeled away on a hospital gurney, and the other one, younger, Asian or Indian by the look of her, was escorted down the backstreet towards the containment van. He ordered the remaining three agency men in He ordered the remaining three agency men in containment suits to stand guard outside the shut er door once they’d made a sweep and reported that the archway was clear. Good men, trusted men … but stil bet er they knew as lit le as possible.
He stood alone now in front of a giant perspex cylinder of water, metal steps up the side and what looked like a toddler’s swing seat xed at the top. Obviously something to do with time travel … like the bank of computer equipment, the other tal thin perspex tubes in the back room, the power generator … al these things clearly played some part in the process.
He wandered back to the long table – a pair of scu ed o ce desks pushed end to end and clut ered with monitors, a keyboard, a dozen crumpled cans of Dr Pepper and a few empty pizza boxes. He could hear the soft whirr of activity from beneath the desk and ducked down to see the muted glow of blinking green and red LEDs. It looked like there were a dozen or more PCs, the kind you could pick up from any Wal-Mart or PC World, linked together into a network.
Beside the desk was a bat ered old o ce ling cabinet. He pul ed out one drawer after another, each l ed with nests of tangled cables and bits and pieces of electronic circuits, like somebody had ripped o a RadioShack store for bits and not yet gured out what to do with it al . He felt a smal stab of disappointment. In his mind’s eye he’d imagined this moment; he’d conjured up visions of some futuristic arrangement, technology from centuries of some futuristic arrangement, technology from centuries ahead, something that looked like the bridge of the USS
Enterprise set up in this old brick archway. Instead, everything he could see here seemed to have been obtained from the present.
He sat down in one of the o ce chairs and it squeaked under his weight.
The answers to this place, why they were here in New York … why they were also in the Cretaceous past, how al this machinery worked, and what it could do … al of those answers he presumed were on these quietly humming computers. He picked up the mouse and slid it across the desk. One of the screens ickered out of screensaver mode and lit up to reveal a relaxing desktop image of an alpine val ey and, right in the middle of the screen, a smal square dialogue box.
> System lockdown enabled.
Cartwright cursed under his breath. The older girl, the one with the frizzy reddish hair, had barked something out just before he’d tasered her. He’d thought she was cal ing out to someone else in the arch, but he realized now that it must have been a voice-activated command.
He tried to remember what she’d said. Oh yeah …
‘Omelet e,’ he said into the desk mic.
> Incorrect activation code.
‘Dammit!’
> Incorrect activation code.
He tried a dozen other candidate words and phrases: egg, broken eggs, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, Easter egg, egg, broken eggs, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, Easter egg, fried egg. Egg hunt, egghead, egg-nog. Al of them produced the response on the screen.
Absently he tapped his ngers on the desk. If he was being honest, this wasn’t how he imagined the moment of discovery was going to be: two scru y kids, a computer system that looked like some bedroom hacker’s dream setup, and that big plastic cylinder making this place look like some kind of homemade brewery. And this lockeddown computer system was obviously not going to tel him anything. He decided it was time he had a lit le chat with the girls.
He stepped out towards the open door and punched the green but on on the side. The metal shut er started to clank and rat le slowly down.
‘No one goes in, or comes out. You have permission to shoot to kil anyone who tries. Understood?’
The three men guarding the entrance nodded.
CHAPTER 56
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
The wide-open plain was alive with the echoing cal s of nocturnal life. Liam had assigned half of them to remain on watch and the other half to try their best to get some sleep, although he doubted anyone was managing that. A re was burning in the middle, not for the meagre light it provided, but for the e ect it seemed to have on the creatures roaming around out there, keeping them al wel away. It was bright enough anyway. The ful moon seemed to il uminate the night enough that it felt lit le darker than an overcast winter’s afternoon in Cork.
‘That moon is actual y bigger, right? Or am I going mad?’
Becks looked up at it. ‘A rmative. It is approximately twenty per cent larger.’
Liam’s eyebrows shot up. ‘A larger moon? So what do you think happened to it? Did it sort of wear down over time or something?’
Whitmore looked at him oddly and tut ed. And Becks …
he wondered whether she’d just rol ed her eyes at him or whether that was just a trick of the light. ‘Negative, Liam. It has not changed size.’
‘It’s just a lit le closer,’ said Whitmore.
‘It’s just a lit le closer,’ said Whitmore.
‘Oh.’
Becks resumed her silent vigil, slowly panning her eyes across the plain, watching for the dark furtive shapes of the creatures moving beyond the dancing circle of their relight.
‘What do you think of those things?’ asked Liam. ‘Are they real y a species of super-smart dinosaur? That lad, Franklyn …’ He paused for a moment, realizing the ensuing panic-stricken retreat from the cove, over the jungle peak and down on to the beach hadn’t permit ed him a single moment of re ection for the poor boy. He could only imagine what those creatures had done to him, if that carcass from nearly a fortnight ago was anything to go by.
The others were waiting for him to nish what he’d started saying.
‘Franklyn said al dinosaurs, even the smart ones, were pret y stupid.’
Whitmore sucked in a breath of warm night air. ‘Those hominids could wel be a dead-end evolution, a branch-o species that maybe shares a common ancestor with troodon.’
‘Troodon?’
He nodded. ‘Palaeontologists commonly agree that the troodon was quite possibly the most intel igent species of dinosaur. Smarter even than their evolutionary cousins, the raptors. Very similar in appearance, both therapods …
saurischian dinosaurs.’
saurischian dinosaurs.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Bipedal … they walk on their hind legs. Like the T-rex does.’
Liam shook his head. ‘Those creatures didn’t look anything like any dinosaur I’ve seen, big or smal . I mean
… their heads?’
Whitmore nodded. ‘Like I say, some dead-end evolution. Perhaps if the K–T event never happened, the asteroid, or volcano or whatever it was, many more sub-species with similar long skul s might have evolved from them. Perhaps that’s why they’re so smart – a greater cranial capacity, a larger brain.’
‘The species exhibits high levels of intel igence,’ said Becks. Her neutral voice seemed to have adopted an ominous tone. ‘They appear capable of tactical planning. They appear to have a language. They do not, however, appear to have developed tool-use.’
‘Why not? If they’re so smart? Why don’t they use spears and bows and arrows?’
Becks had no answer. Whitmore shrugged. ‘Who knows?
Perhaps they’ve never needed to use tools? Maybe nature already made them so lethal they’ve never needed tools?
Or perhaps, because they only seem to have four digits and no thumbs, tool-using is just something they’re unlikely to ever do?’
‘But they’re smart enough?’ asked Liam. ‘Is that what you’re saying? If they had thumbs an’ al … they’d be smart enough to make a spear or a bow or something?’
smart enough to make a spear or a bow or something?’
Whitmore scratched his beard absently. ‘Who knows?’
On the far side of the camp re, Howard and Edward stood watch. The robo-girl had been standing with them for a while and then gone to rejoin her Irish friend and Whitmore. Howard decided now was quite possibly the best time he was going to have to say what he needed to say.‘Edward?’
The smal boy looked up at him.
‘Thank you, you know … for saving me from that shark thing yesterday.’
Edward shrugged like he’d done nothing more than buy him a Coke. ‘OK, Leonard.’
‘No … seriously, Edward, that was something … what you did. It could just as easily have got en you. But you …
you stayed right by me. You saved my life.’
Edward smiled. ‘Sure, Lenny. You’re my best friend.’ He sighed. ‘Wel , my only friend. Like I said, I don’t do so good back home. You know, making friends and stu .’
Howard felt a sour twist of guilt churn away in his guts. He’d come to kil Edward – that’s how he’d ended up here
– and yet this boy seemed like a ten-years-younger version of himself. He’d had things the same way when he’d been at school: lonely because he dared to be di erent. It never changed, did it? Not even in his time, the 2050s. Kids always found a way to single somebody out.
‘Edward, I’ve got to tel you something,’ he said before
‘Edward, I’ve got to tel you something,’ he said before he could stop himself.
‘What?’
‘I’m … I’m not who you think I am.’
Edward frowned and smiled at the same time, bemused.
‘You’re Lenny.’
‘No,’ replied Howard, ‘that’s just it, I’m not. I’m not Leonard Baumgardner. I’m not seventeen.’ He lowered his voice and his eyes ickered across the camp re towards the other three people on guard duty. ‘And I’m not from the year 2015.’
‘What? Serious?’ Edward’s eyes widened. ‘You’re one of them? An agent from the future too?’
Howard shook his head. ‘Not an agent. I don’t work for the same people. I belong to another group, a group trying to stop time travel, but … but in a di erent way.’
Edward stared at him silently. ‘Not Lenny. So what is your name?’
‘Howard.’
He heard Edward mouth the name quietly.
‘But listen, Edward … I … I managed to go back in time to nd you …’ He hesitated, toying with how best to continue, when Edward spoke the words for him.
‘To get to me. That’s it, isn’t it?’
Howard looked away.
‘To stop me going to university? Stop me doing a degree?’
Howard couldn’t bear to meet his eyes.
‘Not to … oh no …’ Edward’s voice dropped. He’d
‘Not to … oh no …’ Edward’s voice dropped. He’d gured it out. ‘No. Don’t say you came to kil me?’
Howard nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Edward … but yeah. To short-circuit history, to cut out a chunk of the past that should never have happened.’ In the dark he couldn’t see how the boy was taking it, just the outline of his round head and narrow shoulders gazing out at the dark plain.
‘That means you’re not real y my friend, then?’
Howard felt that twist of guilt curl and ex like some restless eel making a nest in his bel y.
‘That mean you’re stil going to kil me?’
Howard shook his head. ‘No, not any more.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t need to. We’re stuck here now.’
Edward turned back towards him. ‘But we’re gonna get rescued. Those messages that we –’
‘No one’s going to nd them,’ he replied, shaking his head.
‘How do you know?’
‘If they’d ever been found –’ he nodded towards the others – ‘and Liam and robo-girl’s people were able to come and rescue us, then they’d know what happens in 2015, wouldn’t they? They’d know about me. And they’d make sure you were never on that eld trip to the TERI labs. They’d make sure you were kept as far away from that assassination at empt as possible.’
Edward’s face clouded with thought for a moment. Howard o ered him a smile that was probably lost in the dark anyway. ‘So, I’ve done what had to be done. I’m the dark anyway. ‘So, I’ve done what had to be done. I’m truly sorry it’s landed us here. I real y am … but the world after 2015 is a much safer place without you. There’s no you, there’s no maths thesis, no Waldstein and no time machines. For good or bad … I know the world’s heading for dark times ahead, certainly it is where – when – I came from: oods, droughts, bil ions starving, oil running out, wars. But the world wil get through that eventual y. It can survive that.’
‘But it can’t survive time travel?’
‘No. We’ve been messing around with stu we can’t understand, can’t control. We’re like children playing catch and toss with a neutron bomb. But that’s nished, Edward
… It’s not going to happen. I’m relieved, but I’m also sorry it’s landed you and the others here.’
‘Why be sorry?’ said Edward atly. ‘Mission successful. You did it.’
‘I’m sorry … because, I think, wel , I hope, you and I have become friends. And I’ve put you in this situation.’
Howard could understand if the boy walked away right now and told everything he’d just heard to the others. Then, of course, they’d confront him and perhaps even exact a brutal revenge on him. Howard could understand that and was ready to face the music.
Instead he felt Edward’s smal hand on his forearm. ‘It’s OK. I’m not angry with you.’
He laughed. ‘You have every right to be.’
‘No point,’ said Edward. ‘We’re stuck here forever, then. So we’ve got to work together. Right, Leonard?’
So we’ve got to work together. Right, Leonard?’
Leonard … it sounded like Edward was going to keep this confession to himself.
Howard nodded. ‘So?’
‘So, I’m not tel ing. You’re Leonard stil .’
He smiled. ‘OK … I’m Leonard.’
‘Right.’
‘Right.’
CHAPTER 57
2001, New York
Maddy’s mouth was dry and her head was pounding. She slowly opened her eyes and winced them shut against the painful bright glare of the light overhead.
‘Sorry about that,’ she heard someone say. The lights in the room dimmed slightly. ‘Bet er?’
She cracked her eyes open again, and then nodded. She felt something cool pressed into her hands.
‘Water. Have a sip. It’s just water, I assure you.’
Maddy lifted a plastic tumbler and grateful y slurped a mouthful. Her eyes blinked and she tried to focus on her surroundings: a smal room with a low ceiling, what looked like a medicine cabinet, a strip light overhead. She was lying on what appeared to be a hospital bed and beside her she saw the old man who’d come knocking at their door sit ing on a stool. He’d taken his jacket o , rol ed up his shirtsleeves and loosened his tie.
‘You took a knock on the head when you went down. I’m sorry I had to taser you.’
Yes … that was it. She’d felt like every muscle in her body had locked and an unbelievably agonizing sensation had coursed through her whole body.
‘Where am I?’ She realized she was lying on some sort
‘Where am I?’ She realized she was lying on some sort of a hospital gurney. But then this didn’t look like a hospital ward, or a private ward.
‘New York stil ,’ he smiled. ‘And somewhere perfectly safe.’
She sipped the water again. ‘Who are you?’
The man pul ed the stool forward. It rat led on castors across a smooth linoleum oor. ‘My name’s Lester Cartwright,’ he answered warmly. ‘And yes – if that’s your next question – I work for a, shal we say, a quiet lit le intel igence agency on behalf of the American government.
’ Maddy nodded and smiled blearily. ‘I gured it would be someone like that who’d come to our door.’
‘Wel … who else would it be?’ he asked. ‘Something like this, knowledge of this … it’s far too important for any old Joe to have in his possession. I’m sure you’d agree.
’ Maddy shrugged, her hand reaching up to her forehead and nding a dressing there. ‘I suppose.’
‘So,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘I have just about a mil ion goddamn questions I’ve been wanting to ask someone like you. Questions I’ve been waiting for answers to most of my adult life. And, in return, I have a curious message that I’m sure you’re rather keen to see.’
She was encouraged by the old man’s directness. No beating about the bush, no at empting to fool her, beguile her. Just the straightforward declaration of a quid pro quo. She nodded. ‘A message from a friend.’
She nodded. ‘A message from a friend.’
‘Yes,’ he said as he got up and reached for his jacket neatly draped on a smal storage cabinet in the corner of the room. He fumbled for the inside pocket and nal y pul ed out a folded sheet of paper. ‘A friend who apparently decided to take a holiday during the, if I’m not mistaken, the late Cretaceous period?’
Maddy’s jaw dropped open. ‘I … uh … when did you say?’
‘The late Cretaceous. We’ve tested the rock. It’s de nitely from that time.’
Her lungs emptied a gasp. ‘You mean, like, dinosaur times?’
Cartwright nodded. ‘Yes, I believe it was a popular time for dinosaurs.’
‘Oh my God, I didn’t think the machine –’ She stopped herself before she blurted out anything else. She decided it would be far smarter to keep as much as possible to herself for now.
‘Yes.’ The man’s eyes narrowed curiously. ‘Yes, you do look genuinely surprised at that. What were you going to say?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
He studied her silently for a few moments. ‘This is someone you lost, isn’t it? Someone you’ve been unable to retrieve? To nd? Some kind of mistake? Is that it?’
‘May I see the message, please?’ she replied.
‘You didn’t think time travel that far back was possible?
’ he said, shing for a reaction on her face. ‘Am I right?’
’ he said, shing for a reaction on her face. ‘Am I right?’
‘We lost someone, al right? Now, can I see the message?’
‘Where are you from?’ he asked, then shook his head. Comical y, he gently slapped his forehead. ‘Stupid, stupid me … it’s when are you from I should be asking, isn’t it?’
Maddy couldn’t help a smile and a dry laugh. ‘It does that to you, this business … makes you want to slap your head.’
The old man shared the smile. ‘I can imagine.’ The smile eased away. Business again. ‘You’re American, that much I’ve worked out. Boston?’
She nodded. No point trying to hide that. ‘Yes.’
‘When?’ He looked at her T-shirt, the faded Intel logo on the front, her jeans, her pumps. ‘Not too far into the future is my guess.’
‘Maybe.’
‘You want to see this?’ he asked, unfolding the message. She nodded.
‘Then can we start having some precise answers from you?’
She shrugged. ‘OK.’
‘Your name is?’
‘Maddy. Maddy Carter.’
‘Hel o, Maddy.’ He nodded politely. ‘And what year are you from?’
‘I’m from 2010,’ she replied.
The answer seemed to stun him. His eyes widened involuntarily and beneath the folds of his wrinkled skin involuntarily and beneath the folds of his wrinkled skin above the crisp white col ar of his shirt, his jaw worked as teeth ground. Final y he pursed his lips. ‘2010 you said?’
‘Yup.’
‘You actual y know the future? The next nine years of it?’‘Of course.’
His face drained. ‘Then you … you’re saying you know, for example, what this government’s foreign policy goals might be? Long-term strategic plans? Those kind of things?
’ She smiled. ‘Oh yeah, I know what’s round the corner.’
That silenced him for a long while. She watched the folded paper ut er in his hand.
‘Do you know just how dangerous that makes you to certain people?’ he said softly. ‘I can think of quite a few col eagues in my line of business who’d want to put a bul et in your head right now. Quite a few more who’d want to torture every last lit le fact out of that head of yours … oh, and then put a bul et in it.’
‘The message?’
He nodded his head absently and then handed it over.
‘It might amuse you to know,’ he said, ‘I can recite every word and every last number of the coded section. I’ve known o by heart what’s writ en down on there for the last decade and a half.’ He laughed humourlessly. ‘Like an old poem drummed into your head at school and you never ever forget.’
Maddy reached for it and unfolded the paper. She saw Maddy reached for it and unfolded the paper. She saw handwriting. She presumed it was the old man’s handwriting.
Take this to Archway 9, Wythe Street, Brooklyn, New York on Monday 10 September 2001.
Message: -89-1-9/54-1-5/76-1-2/23-3-5/17-8-4/7-3-7/5-8-3/12-6-9/238-1/3-1-1/56-9-2/12-5-8/67-8-3/92-6-7/112-8-3/234-6-1/45-7-3/30-62/34-8-3/41-5-6/99-7-1/2-6-9/127-8-1/128-7-3/259-1-5/2-7-1/69-15/14-2-66. Key is ‘Magic’. Oh my God, Liam … you’re alive. You made it.
‘Now, the rst bit makes sense to me … clearly designed to make sure the message nds its way to you –’
She cut him short. ‘Where did you get the message from?’
He cocked a wiry grey eyebrow. ‘A fossil, would you believe? A fossil discovered by some boys in 1941. The second of May, to be precise. Along a river near a town cal ed Glen Rose in the state of Texas. It nearly caused a sensation, but … the wartime secret service worked quickly to hush up the nd. And, of course, people were far more concerned about the war then than sil y rumours about mysterious fossil nds.’
He smiled. ‘The place was taken over by secret service goons, and guess what else they found?’
Maddy shrugged.
‘A few months after the message was discovered, they found a human footprint.’ He looked up at her. ‘Oh yes, a genuine human footprint, from the same strata of sedimentary rock. The print of some sort of a running sedimentary rock. The print of some sort of a running shoe.’ He was amused by that. ‘That’s what they cal ed it back then, a running shoe. They didn’t have training shoes back then.’
‘Uh?’
‘A forensic expert matched the print pat ern to the Nike brand last year.’
‘And no one else knows?’
He laughed. ‘Of course not. The boys who original y discovered the artefact … wel –’ he glanced at her – ‘our methods were a lit le uncivilized back then.’
‘Kil ed?’
‘Hmmm … vanished … is the term I think we prefer. And, of course, it turned out a few years later that some other local rockhound had found fossilized human footprints the previous summer … so again there was need for some damage limitation.’
‘Vanished too?’
He shook his head. ‘News of the human footsteps got to the local newspapers before it could be contained. We simply discredited the story. Easily done, the same old boy swore blind his dead mother lived in the at ic and came down once a year to bake his birthday cake.’ He snorted.
‘Complete loon by al accounts. Anyway, go look it up sometime. I’m sure it’s on some conspiracy website somewhere: “Humans Walked with Dinosaurs – Dinosaur Val ey, Texas”.’
She looked down at the message again. ‘So, you know exactly how old the fossil is?’
exactly how old the fossil is?’
He shook his head. ‘No, not exactly. Of course not. It’s identi ed as coming from a seam of sedimentary rock that pre-dates the end of the Cretaceous period. What they cal the K–T boundary. That’s as precise as we can be, I’m afraid. Geology works in aeons and ages, not months or years.’
He gestured at the piece of paper. ‘The numbers … I presume the numbers contain speci c information that would help you retrieve your friend?’
She could deny that, but it was quite obviously the information Liam would have put down there. ‘I hope so,’
she said.
‘But unfortunately it’s encoded,’ he said. ‘Now, the secret service boys who pre-dated my lit le club’s involvement in this mat er identi ed this pret y quickly as some sort of book code. See? The numbers fol ow the page, line, word structure. And about a decade ago, we managed to secure some very expensive time on the Defence Department’s mainframe and ran every single book in the Library of Congress through it.’ He splayed his hands tiredly. ‘We got diddly squat for al our troubles, of course. Which leads me to think, as I sit here with you now, that that was a big waste of time as this probably is a book that hasn’t even been published yet. How about that?
’ Maddy shook her head. ‘I … I don’t know. I real y don’t.
’ She glanced at the last words of the message. ‘Key is She glanced at the last words of the message. ‘Key is
“Magic”.’ She looked up at Cartwright. ‘That’s the clue, right? But I just … I just don’t know … If that real y is a clue to a book, I wouldn’t know which one.’
‘What about your col eague?’
‘Sal?’ She sat up and groaned with the e ort. ‘Is she OK?
Where is she?’
‘Oh, she’s just ne,’ he said, waving his hands dismissively. ‘And she’s nearby. Maybe it’s time I had a chat with her.’
‘You won’t hurt her?’
He looked sternly at her as he reached for the piece of paper, got o the stool and picked his jacket up o the cabinet.
‘Because, see, if … uh … if that’s what you’re planning to do,’ Maddy continued, ‘then don’t b-bother.’
‘Oh, let me guess, because the pair of you are heroes and neither one of you is going to talk, huh?’
‘Because –’ she shook her head and laughed nervously –
‘because there’s real y no need. Neither of us are heroes. We’l talk, OK? Just promise me you won’t hurt us.’
CHAPTER 58
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Kel y struggled up the steep incline, cursing under his breath as low-hanging thorned vines scratched at his face. Ahead he could hear the others pushing their way noisily uphil , the snapping of branches and vines, the clat er of dislodged rocks and soil rol ing downhil .
‘Leonard? Edward?’ he cal ed out.
‘Here,’ gasped Edward.
‘Come on, you need to pick it up … we’re lagging behind the others.’
Their sweat-drenched faces emerged through a curtain of waxy leaves. ‘I’m exhausted,’ gasped Howard. ‘My leg
…’ He failed to nish his words between ragged pu s of air. He dropped uncomfortably to his knees on to an uneven bed of dried cones, twigs and jagged rocks.
‘It’s slowing him down,’ said Edward. ‘His ankle.’
‘I know, I know, but we can’t let the others get too far ahead.’
Around their camp re last night the discussion had turned to why those creatures hadn’t at acked them again, instead choosing to discreetly fol ow them at a distance. The conclusion they’d come to was that they were playing a tactical game, waiting for the group to become spread a tactical game, waiting for the group to become spread out enough to be able to pick them o one at a time. This morning as they’d made their way across the rest of the plain towards the last stretch of the journey, down into the jungle val ey, they’d been almost comical y bunched up. But now, hacking their way through dense foliage, the group was get ing dangerously strung out.
‘Come on, Edward, help me get him up.’
It was then that Kel y caught a glimpse through a gap in the leaves of some dark form fty yards below them.
‘Oh Jesus,’ he hissed. ‘I saw something back there!’
‘What?’
‘Just … just …. there’s no one else behind us, is there?’
Edward shook his head.
Kel y saw it again, a dark form hurrying between the trunks of two trees, then dropping down out of sight. ‘Oh my God! They’re down there!’
Howard was on his feet again.
‘Go! Go!’ snapped Kel y. ‘I’l watch our backs!’
Edward and Howard stumbled forward again, Kel y reversing uphil , keeping his eyes on the downhil as he fumbled his way after them. Again, he saw it. Closer now, the icker of dark olive skin, leaping between the gaps in the leaves. More than one of them, and moving so terrifyingly quietly. More worryingly … they didn’t seem to care that they were being seen.
Oh no.
Now they were in the jungle they were closing the gap. I’m not going to outrun them.
I’m not going to outrun them.
He realized he stood a far bet er chance squaring up to them, perhaps even skewering one of them on the end of his spear. Maybe another kil would buy them another day of caution, enough time to get back over that river to the camp.
‘Come on,’ he hissed. ‘I know you’re down there!’
He heard Edward cal ing down. ‘Mr Kel y?’
‘Go!’ he shouted. ‘I’m just coming!’
The sound of the two boys’ clumsy staggering slowly receded from him until al he could hear was the occasional snap of a branch echoing o the tal stout trunks of the canopy trees.
‘Come on!’ he whispered again. He was surprised that it wasn’t abject terror he was feeling right now, but anger. Rage. He wanted to grab one of those scrawny things and rip its ridiculous marrow-shaped head o . His throat l ed with a dry laugh.
Who do you think you are – Tarzan?
A far cry from his normal life: PR guy, meeting and greeting visitors with his cheesy tanned smile and his nice linen suit and expensive polo shirt. Right now, standing legs apart in trousers ripped o at the knees to make shorts, bare-chested, revealing a pale torso tufted with silver-grey hair and drooping man-boobs that spoke of a lapsed gym membership … right now he felt like that commando character in the lm his sons liked, the one with the alien with a crab face and dreadlocks. Oh yeah, he was ready for them.
Oh yeah, he was ready for them.
‘Come on … you want some of me? Then COME ON!’
As if in answer, in the stil ness of the jungle around him, he heard a soft, high-pitched voice.
‘… Come … on …’
Then ahead of him, as if it had appeared like the Cheshire Cat, only yel ow eyes rst instead of a big grin, there stood one of the creatures, a dozen yards downhil of him, cocking its head and studying him intently. Kel y took several steps downhil , lunging with the tip of his spear. ‘Yeah? So that’s what you things look like up close.’
It recoiled at the sight of the spear, ducking back into a patch of waxy leaves, only to emerge again a moment later.
‘Oh yeah! I can kil you with this spear,’ mut ered Kel y triumphantly. The spear seemed to be warding o the creature, its yel ow eyes warily locked on the sharpened tip of bamboo.
The sound of the others moving through the jungle was al but gone now. He couldn’t a ord to remain like this much longer. He needed a kil pret y soon, and for the rest of those things to hopeful y bolt like rabbits.
‘Come on,’ he said quietly, ‘just you and me. Man versus ugly lizard thing.’
Its jaw snapped open and a dark tongue curled like a serpent inside. ‘… Lizz … arrrrd … ting …’ A surprisingly close approximation of his own voice.
‘So you do impressions, huh?’
‘So you do impressions, huh?’
The creature cocked its head thoughtful y, and it was then, as the creature was distracted, working out how to replicate what he’d just said, that he decided to make his move. He took a quick step and a short leap forward and thrust the spear hard. It caught something soft and the creature apped and ailed on the end of the bamboo, howling with a voice that reminded him of the awful noise a dog can make if you step on its tail.
‘YES!’ he snarled.
First blood. He pul ed the spear back out, leaving a large puncture wound in the creature’s bel y, out of which thick dark blood began to sput er as it ailed in screeching agony on the jungle oor.
He was about to stab the thing again, but he felt the spear yanked roughly out of his hands.
‘Whuh?’
He turned to see a larger hominid, standing ful y erect, maybe a foot tal er than him. It snarled angrily, a rat ling croak in the depth of its throat. He saw others behind it, then became aware of yel ow eyes al around him. The creature held his spear in both of its clawed hands, closely inspecting the long thick shaft, and then nal y the sharpened tip, wet with dark blood. It looked at the tip, cocked its head and then looked down at Kel y, who now no longer felt so much like a commando. His knees buckled beneath him and he found himself in a helpless squat on the jungle oor.
Oh God, oh God …
Oh God, oh God …
‘Run,’ he whimpered. ‘Why aren’t you r-running? Wwhy aren’t you running?’ That was what was meant to happen. If this was a lm, that’s what would happen, right? The weedy o ce guy nal y nds his inner hero and saves the day?
‘I k-kil ed one … so why … w-why aren’t you rrunning?’
The creature holding the spear took a step forward and once more inspected the bloodied tip of the bamboo before turning it round so that it pointed towards Kel y.
‘Oh … no …’ he found himself whimpering. ‘P-please
…’The normal everyday sounds of a Cretaceous jungle, the distant lowing of large ambling leviathans on the far-o plain, the chat er and squeak of smal foraging creatures going about their business, were punctuated by a peculiar sound: the protracted, rat ling scream of a human being. It echoed up through the jungle and out through the tops of the canopy trees, startling ocks of smal anurognathus from their branches and into the air.
CHAPTER 59
2001, New York
‘I’m not saying another thing to you!’ snapped Sal. Cartwright shrugged. ‘Wel , OK. But then I guess I’m not going to show you what I’ve got.’
It was silent in the smal interrogation room, except for the soft hum of an air-conditioner. It was warm and stu y. He casual y loosened his tie.
Sal’s narrowed eyes softened, piqued with curiosity.
‘What? What have you got?’
He smiled. ‘Hmm … now there was me thinking we weren’t going to be talking to each other.’
‘Oh shadd-yah! Please. Just tel me!’
He pursed his lips, giving it some thought. ‘And are you going to tel me the things I want to know?’
She clamped her mouth shut, said nothing.
‘You know? I suspect you probably wil ,’ Cartwright relented. ‘After al , you, me and Maddy al want the same thing: to bring your friend back home safely.’
‘He’s alive? Liam’s alive?’
‘I believe so.’ He nodded and reached into his breast pocket. ‘He decided to write home.’ He passed her the folded sheet of paper and she quickly began to scan the handwriting.
handwriting.
‘Your col eague Maddy and I were discussing it just a few minutes ago. She’s real y rather keen to bring him home too. And you know I’m prepared to help you girls do that. Whatever you want, whatever you need. But …’
She looked up. ‘But?’
He splayed his hands almost apologetical y. ‘That technology in the arch. I’m afraid that’s going to be US
government property now. And we’re going to need your help in guring out how it al works.’
‘We can’t do that,’ she started. ‘We can’t just let you have it. It’s too dangerous!’
‘Too dangerous for the government? But apparently not too dangerous for a pair of kids to mess around with?’
‘We were recruited. Special y recruited.’
‘Recruited by?’
Sal hesitated. ‘I can’t real y say.’
He shrugged. ‘Wel , that can wait until later. It’s not so important. The fact is somebody needs to take charge of what’s in that archway.’ He cocked a questioning eyebrow.
‘I mean, somebody’s got to be in charge, right? Making sure there aren’t loads of other time machines and people running around when and where they shouldn’t be.’
‘And what … that someone’s going to be you, is it?’
‘Me for now, perhaps. In time I’l brief the current president on what we have. But believe you me, far bet er you have someone like myself looking after this on behalf of the American people than some terrorist group or some mad dictator looking for a world-beating weapon, a mad dictator looking for a world-beating weapon, a madman like Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden. Hmm?
’ She shrugged a ‘Whatever’ at him.
‘Now,’ he said, nodding at the paper in her hands.
‘There’s a code there. Maddy seems to think you might know how to decipher it.’
She looked down at the numbers, a meaningless jumble of digits that meant absolutely nothing to her at rst glance. But then, very quickly, the pat ern began to speak to her. Groups of three numbers, the rst into the hundreds, the second being numbers no greater than thirtyve and the last seeming to peak at numbers no greater than fteen, sixteen. She knew exactly what that was.
‘It’s some kind of a book code.’
‘Clever girl. But now, here’s the sixty-four thousand dol ar question. Which book?’
She scanned to the bot om of the numbers and saw the last word of the message.
Magic.
Magic? What the jahul a sort of a clue was tha–?
She looked up at him, a smile slowly spreading across her face. Of course, if Bob had it in his database, so the duplicate AI in the female support unit would also.
‘You know, don’t you?’ said Cartwright.
‘Uh-huh.’ She was almost tempted to tel him the book’s title anyway, since it wasn’t going to be published for another few years yet. Instead she at empted to suppress an irresistible urge to giggle.
an irresistible urge to giggle.
The old man sighed patiently. ‘Wel , you could, of course, just tel me. Which would be far more pleasant for the pair of us. Or we have a medicine cabinet ful of interesting drugs I can pump into you. Some of them with some quite horri c side e ects. And failing that there’s always the old-fashioned way.’
‘You take us back to the archway,’ she said, ‘and I’l decode the rest of this message for you.’
He shook his head. ‘Hmm, now see, my concern is that we get back into that archway of yours and one of you kids’l shout out something else, and – pop! – you and al that machinery vanishes in a pu of twinkly time travel sparkles and smoke.’
‘She hasn’t told you yet, has she?’
He frowned. ‘Told me what?’
Sal’s smile widened, a nervous twitchy smile. ‘That’s actual y real y funny.’
‘Funny?’
She nodded. ‘Funny.’
‘Why? What’s funny?’
‘She’s playing with you. How long have I been in here?’
‘Why?’
‘Please … tel me how long?’
He looked down at his watch. ‘A few hours. Why?’
‘Exactly. Please.’
‘Five hours … ve and a half hours.’
She giggled again. ‘You don’t have much time left, then.’
The last of the congenial expression was lost from his The last of the congenial expression was lost from his rumpled face. ‘Stop messing around and tel me what the hel you’re talking about!’
‘Sure,’ she said amicably. ‘Our computer system is locked down for six hours. After that, it’s got orders to total y brick itself if Maddy doesn’t give it another codeword.’
‘Brick?’
‘Fry al the data. Al the machinery. Everything.’
His bushy eyebrows both arced, and beneath his jowls his jaw began grinding away again.
‘You ready to take us back now?’ asked Sal politely. ‘I’l even say “please”.’
CHAPTER 60
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Broken Claw looked at the others in his family pack, predator eyes meeting predator eyes. In his claws he was stil holding the bamboo spear, the bloodied end of it embedded in what was left of the new creature. His mind worked hard trying to understand what he’d done. Trying to comprehend the fact that it wasn’t his claws that had ended this pale creature’s life, but the long device that he was holding, something other than him. Something he control ed. Something he had … used. He turned to the others, clicked and growled and mewled softly.
Do you see? We kil ed the new creature with this. Their minds, al younger, less developed. His children stared, yel ow eyes burning with hatred, but not quite understanding, not just yet.
But he did. And his older, wiser mind stretched a lit le further. This long stick he held, he understood now what it was and where it came from. They grew along the river in thick clusters. But now it was no longer simply a plant –
the new creatures had fashioned it into something else entirely: a deadly weapon.
Something deep in his reptilian mind shifted. Concepts, Something deep in his reptilian mind shifted. Concepts, very simple concepts, looking for each other amid a busy crowd of instinct-driven brain signals, nal y nding each other and embracing.
His pack had no communicable sound for the concept. His mind had no word for the idea. But if he’d had a wider range of words to construct his thoughts from then his mind would have been ful of words like use, make, build
… His smal mind suddenly produced an image, an image of a fast-owing river and a tree trunk lying across it – a device the new creatures had built to cross the river. He turned to the others, clicked his teeth and beckoned them to fol ow.
What he had growing in his mind is what any human being would have cal ed … a plan.
CHAPTER 61
2001, New York
They approached the archway. Cartwright nodded at his men stil standing guard outside. He gestured to Forby to join them inside as the shut er cranked noisily up. The other men he instructed to continue guarding the entrance, al owing no one else inside.
One by one they al stooped under the shut er as it clat ered to a halt. As he fol owed the others in, Cartwright glanced up at the sky above Manhat an, beginning to lighten with the rst grey stain of dawn. Another hour and it was going to be daylight, New Yorkers get ing ready to go to work, and disgruntled civilians building up around the road blocks either end of the Wil iamsburg Bridge. Tra c police, TV lm crews and journalists were surely soon going to add to that, asking his men and the National Guard soldiers where their orders had come from. What the hel was going on? He and his discreet lit le under-theradar agency could do without at racting that kind of at ention. The terrorist-bomb cover story those men had been given would hold for a lit le while longer, but not forever.
The last one inside the archway, he pressed the but on and the shut er rat led down noisily again. Forby removed and the shut er rat led down noisily again. Forby removed his bio-containment hood and then unslung his machine pistol.
‘It’s al right, no need to aim it at the girls,’ said Cartwright. ‘But just have it to hand, uh?’
Forby nodded and lowered his aim.
‘So,’ he continued, approaching the desk stacked with monitors, ‘the computer? Before it’s al fried?’
Maddy nodded. ‘Yes, of course. DOMINOES.’
Cartwright shook his head. Of course. You idiot, Lester. He looked at the Domino’s pizza boxes strewn across the desk, and would have slapped himself if he’d been alone. The dialogue box on one of the screens ickered to life as a cursor ashed and scut led across the screen with new text.> Welcome back, Maddy.
‘Hi, Bob,’ she said. ‘I’m in time, aren’t I?’
> No system les have been erased yet. You had another seven minutes before I proceeded with your instructions.
‘Christ,’ mut ered Lester, ‘you weren’t kidding.’
Sal shook her head. ‘Nope.’
> My camera detects unauthorized personnel in the eld o ce.
‘Yes,’ said Maddy, ‘we have guests.’
> Are you under duress?
‘No, it’s ne, Bob. These guys are OK, for now.’
Cartwright tapped Maddy’s arm and spoke quietly to her. ‘Anything funny, I mean it … you say anything to that her. ‘Anything funny, I mean it … you say anything to that computer that sounds remotely like a warning and it’l be the very last thing you do.’
She nodded. ‘Don’t worry … I’m not stupid.’ She sat down in one of the o ce chairs and faced the computer’s webcam. ‘Bob, we got a message from Liam.’
> I am very pleased to hear that.
‘Yes, so are we.’
Sal joined her at the table. ‘Hey, Bob.’
> Hel o, Sal.
She held up the piece of paper Lester Cartwright had produced earlier. ‘This is the message. Can you see it clearly?’
> Hold it very stil , please. I wil scan it. A moment later the scanned image from the webcam appeared on one of the monitors and the image ickered light and dark as Bob adjusted the contrast to get a clearer resolution of the handwriting. Then a highlight box ashed around each handwrit en let er in rapid succession, until nal y a text-processing application opened itself on yet another monitor with the entire message typed out clearly.
> Some of the message is in code.
‘That’s right,’ said Sal. ‘It’s a book code.’
> The encryption clue is ‘magic’. Is this correct?
‘Yes.’
> I have more than thirty thousand data strings that include the word ‘magic’.
‘I think that’s referring to the book you were reading the other day. Do you remember? We were discussing it.’
other day. Do you remember? We were discussing it.’
> Harry Pot er and the Deathly Hal ows.
‘Yeah, that’s the one.’
Cartwright and Forby leaned forward. ‘You have got to be kidding,’ mumbled the old man.
‘Hey, my daughter is reading those books,’ said Forby.
‘Is that the next one?’
‘It’s the last one,’ said Maddy. ‘Book seven.’
‘Jeez! What my girl wouldn’t give to get a look at that!’
Cartwright cocked an eyebrow at his man. ‘Forby …
please be quiet.’ The man obediently drew back and resumed his wary stance, the gun held loosely in his hands. Sal sat down beside Maddy. ‘Bob, you and the duplicate AI wil have the same digital book le, right?’
> A rmative. The le was in my short-term memory cache when we downloaded the duplicate AI into the support unit.
‘Then this should be pret y much straightforward,’ said Maddy.
‘Yeah.’ Sal icked her hair out of her eyes. ‘You’ve just got to replace each three-number code with the let er. You understand how the code works, Bob, yeah?’
> A rmative. Page number. Line number. Let er number.
‘That’s right.’
> Just a moment.
They watched in silence as clusters of numbers were momentarily highlighted on the document, while on another screen, pages of the book ashed back and forth in another screen, pages of the book ashed back and forth in a blur. The task was completed in less than thirty seconds.
> The complete message is: Take this to Archway 9, Wythe Street, Brooklyn, New York on Monday 10
September 2001. Message: Sip, two, sehjk, three, npne, gour, zwro, aix. Key is ‘Magic’.
They stared at it in silence for a few moments, trying to make sense of it.
‘Wel , that’s just gibberish, isn’t it?’ said Cartwright.
‘Are you sure you’re working from the same digital book le?’ asked Maddy.
> A rmative.
‘The original numbers on the fossil,’ said Cartwright,
‘some of them were indistinct, or incomplete. I have access to the original piece of rock.’
‘No … it’s OK,’ said Sal. ‘If it’s just numbers it’s real y easy to work out. Sip is six. Sehjk, must be seven.’ She worked quickly, writing the numbers down on a scrap of paper.
‘There.’
6-2-7-3-9-4-0-6
‘It’s not in the usual time-stamp format,’ said Maddy.
> Please show me, Sal.
Sal held the piece of paper up to the webcam.
> It is a number. 62,739,406. Suggestion: it is the AI duplicate’s best estimation of their current time location.
‘Oh my God!’ gasped Maddy. ‘It actual y managed to work it out?’ She looked at the cam and smiled. ‘Wel , that’s you, actual y, isn’t it? A copy of you, Bob. Wel that’s you, actual y, isn’t it? A copy of you, Bob. Wel done!’
‘To the exact year?’ said Cartwright. ‘To the exact year?
That’s … that’s incredible. How could anyone possibly –’
> Negative. The best resolution guess can only be to within 1,000 years of that year.
That silenced them al .
They could be up to 500 years before or after the speci ed time location.
‘Oh jahul a,’ whispered Sal. ‘Then that’s no good to us.’
‘The nearest thousand years?’ Maddy’s head drooped.
‘How are we supposed to nd him in that?’
Cartwright looked down at both girls. ‘So your machine can’t bring back your col eague?’
Maddy shook her head. ‘It takes time to build up enough charge to open a portal, particularly for one that long ago. I don’t even know how long it would take to accumulate enough to open one then anyway, let alone do it thousands and thousands of times over.’
> Information: approximate charge time – nine hours.
‘So we can do it,’ said Sal.
Maddy laughed drily. ‘Yes, we can … but a thousand years? If we opened one window for each year it’l take us nine thousand hours … what’s that? Just over a year of constantly opening and closing portals.’
‘So? We’l do that for Liam, right?’
Maddy sighed. ‘That’s opening one window per year. What are the chances of Liam standing right there in the two or three seconds of that year? Hmm? What if he was two or three seconds of that year? Hmm? What if he was asleep at that moment? Taking a leak? Hunting for food?
To stand any sort of chance we’d need to open one … like
… every day!’
‘This sounds like a needle-in-a-haystack problem,’ said Cartwright unhelpful y.
‘Oh.’ Sal bit her lip. ‘But we could try, couldn’t we?’
‘Three hundred and sixty-ve thousand at empts!’
replied Maddy. ‘Do you want to have a guess how many years that would take us? Hmm? Lemmesee,’ she mut ered, as she gnawed on the nails of one hand. ‘Oh, there … three hundred and seventy-ve years or something.’ She made a shrewish face, growing pink and mot led with frustration and anger. ‘So, what do you say we get started, then?’
‘Then I’m sorry, that’s it,’ stepped in Cartwright. ‘I’m afraid your friend is stuck where he is. This facility wil need to be packed up by the end of today and shipped down to a more secure government facility.’
‘You can’t do that!’ snapped Sal. ‘This is our … this is our home!’
‘It’s now a US government asset,’ he replied calmly.
‘And so are you, my dear.’
> Suggestion.
‘You can’t do that! We’ve got … like, human rights and stu !’
Cartwright’s smile was humourless and cold, the calm and empty gesture of someone who cared not one whit. ‘I wonder … who exactly is going to miss the pair of you?
wonder … who exactly is going to miss the pair of you?
Hmm? Family? Friends?’
‘The agency,’ snapped Sal. ‘And if you mess with us, if you hurt us, they’l come for you! They’re from the future!
And they’re –’
‘Sal!’ barked Maddy. ‘Shut up!’ She grabbed Sal’s arm.
‘Don’t say anything more about the agency! Do you understand?’
She clamped her mouth shut and nodded mutely. Maddy looked at Cartwright. ‘I think I can guess what you have in mind for us; you’l keep us under lock and key in some remote Area Fifty-one facility, like freaks, like lab rats. And that’s where we’l remain until you’re sure you know everything about this technology … then I guess you’l dispose of us, right? A drive out into the middle of the Nevada Desert and one shot in the back of the head for each of us. Is that how you lot work?’
Cartwright shook his head. ‘Nothing so brutal, Maddy. You’re worth far too much to us alive. Even when I’m sure you’ve told me al that you know, we’re stil going to need guinea pigs to test your time machine on.’ He sighed.
‘Mind you, it would have been good to have your col eague too … I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with the idea of him being out there roaming around history. But I suppose if he’s sixty-two mil ion years away, I can’t see him doing –’
Sal cast a glance back at the monitor.
> Suggestion: rapid-sweep density probes. She pointed at the screen. ‘Maddy! Look!’
She pointed at the screen. ‘Maddy! Look!’
Maddy spun in her chair to look at the monitor and quickly digested the words. ‘Oh my God, yes! Probes. Density probes … that could work!’
‘What?’ said Cartwright, shaking his head irritably at the distraction. ‘What’re you on about?’
‘Tachyon signal probes to check a return location is clear of obstructions and that someone else isn’t wandering through it before we open.’
Cartwright looked none the wiser.
‘It’s like … it’s like knocking on a door before entering. Like asking is anyone in there? It’s a lot quicker than actual y opening a portal. A lot less energy needed.’ She turned back towards the mic on the desk. ‘Bob, what are you suggesting? We can’t scan every moment over a thousand years … can we?’
> Negative. We scan a xed moment of each day, 500
years either side of the calculated year. That is a total of 365,250 density probes.
‘But that’s going to take you what? Months? Years?’
asked Cartwright.
> Negative. Smal signals, no more than a few dozen particles per signal, would be enough to identify a transient mass. Movement.
‘Yes,’ said Maddy. ‘That’s it! And al the signals that came back with some movement detected could become a
… become our candidate list: a shortlist of times we could try to open a portal on. Bob, how long would it take to do that many probes?’ She turned back to Cartwright. ‘It’l that many probes?’ She turned back to Cartwright. ‘It’l take a lot less time, I promise you! Maybe just a few days, tops!’
He shook his head. ‘Unacceptable. I want this archway empty by the end of today. Empty and everything inside in boxes and en route to –’
‘Please!’ begged Maddy. ‘We can’t leave Liam out there!’
Cartwright silently shook his head.
‘He knows the location of al the other eld o ces,’ cut in Sal.
Maddy’s jaw dropped open. ‘Whuh?’
‘He alone knows where they al are. Locations, timestamps.’ She turned to Maddy. ‘I’m sorry … I was going to tel you, but … but Foster swore me to secrecy.’
Cartwright studied her silently. ‘There are others, then?
Other places like this?’
Her face hardened and her dark eyes narrowed. ‘I’m not tel ing you any more. I don’t know any more, but … like I say, Liam knows.’
‘Hmm.’ He thumbed his chin thoughtful y.
‘Bob,’ said Maddy, ‘how many days would it take to do those density scans?’
> Calculating … just a moment … just a moment …
‘Nice try, young lady,’ said Cartwright eventual y. ‘You know, that was almost convincing. But it’s the sort of nonsense that only happens in movies.’ His croaky voice raised in pitch to that of some damsel in distress. ‘Oh, please don’t shoot, mister … If you let me live, I’l show you where the loot is hidden.’
you where the loot is hidden.’
Cartwright laughed, pleased with his impression. Sal shook her head. ‘Oh, I’m not lying. Where do you think the time machine came from?’ she replied. ‘What?
You think me and Maddy put it al together by ourselves?’
He had no answer for that.
Maddy could see where Sal was going with this. A good blu . ‘She’s right, Cartwright. Where do you think we get spare parts from? When the displacement system breaks down, who do you think we cal to come and x it? Some spot y kid from PC World?’
Sal nodded. ‘You think our people are going to let you walk away with one of their time machines?’
There were questions there that the old man needed time to consider careful y. The room remained a motionless tableau, while from somewhere overhead came the faint muted sound of a circling helicopter. The blink of the cursor running across the dialogue box suddenly caught everyone’s at ention.
> Information: running at 11 scans a second, 365,250
scans wil take approximately nine hours.
‘Nine hours,’ said Maddy. ‘See that? Nine hours.’ She looked at her watch. ‘By three this afternoon, we’l have an idea exactly when he is and we’l be able to bring him back.’ She smiled sarcastical y at him. ‘Then you’l have three lab rats to play around with instead of two.’
‘Yes.’ Cartwright nodded appreciatively. ‘I suppose there is that.’
‘Please,’ whispered Sal, her hard-bargaining face
‘Please,’ whispered Sal, her hard-bargaining face softened to that of a begging puppy.
‘Al right. But if either of you tries anything sil y, like dial ing for help with one of these signals –’ he reached into his jacket and pul ed out a handgun – ‘in fact, if you do anything that isn’t explained clearly to me rst, I wil shoot you dead. Do you understand?’
They both nodded quickly.
‘There’l be no shouted warnings, girls. I wil simply pick up my gun and I wil blow your brains across that messy desk of yours.’ He o ered them that cold lifeless smile. ‘And, believe me, you’d be in very good company. It won’t be the rst time I’ve blown a person’s brains right out of his head.’
Maddy swal owed and pu ed out a ut ering breath, her eyes resolutely on the wavering muzzle of Cartwright’s gun.‘Sure. Uh … O-OK. Nothing sil y, then … I total y promise you that.’
CHAPTER 62
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Liam heard the roar of the water through the trees ahead of them.
‘Becks? Are we close?’
‘A rmative. The river is a hundred and twenty-six yards ahead of us.’
He grinned a mixture of relief and bravado. ‘Jay-zus-’n’Mary, am I glad to be back!’
By the look on the faces of the others they couldn’t agree more with that. The thick canopy of leaves above them began to thin out as they approached the jungle’s edge, lances of late-afternoon sunlight stabbing down past loops of vine and dappling the ground with pools of mot led light.
With a nal glance back at the forbidding darkness behind them, and an almost complete certainty that those things were stil somewhere back there watching them from a distance, they hurried forward into the light. Up ahead the river frothed and tumbled like some endlessly enraged beast. On the far side, he could see their bridge, dangling like a crane’s arm above the water. He was relieved to see it was raised; the four they’d left behind had maintained a wary caution.
behind had maintained a wary caution.
Liam stood on the bank and cupped his hands. ‘Hel o-oo-o-o!’
The others gathered beside him. They’d lost three of their number, Ranjit, Franklyn and, earlier this morning, Kel y. Al of them had heard his cry, and it had hastened their e orts down into the jungle val ey, knowing those things were somewhere behind. And they’d grouped together more cautiously, realizing now the creatures were looking for stragglers.
Being bunched together seemed to have paid o . There’d been no sign of them throughout the morning, midday and now into the afternoon. Not even when they’d cleared the bare peak. Liam had looked back quickly in the hope of catching their pursuers unawares. But he saw nothing.
Now they were back. Job was done.
Liam craned his neck to look into the thin veil of jungle on the far side of the river. He could see some slivers of light through the dark tree trunks, the clearing beyond. But no sign of anyone coming their way to lower the bridge yet.‘Try again,’ said Laura.
‘H-E-L-L-O-O-O-O-O!’
Liam’s voice echoed above the roar of the river, and startled a ock of miniature pterodactyls from a nearby tree. They waited with growing anticipation for a few minutes.
‘They’d have heard that surely?’ said Whitmore.
‘They’d have heard that surely?’ said Whitmore. Edward stood on tiptoes to get a look through the jungle opposite. ‘Unless they’re al sleeping.’
‘There’l be hel to pay if they are,’ mut ered Liam. He cupped his hands again. ‘WE’RE BACK!’
Stil nothing.
‘Maybe they gone huntin’?’ said Juan.
‘I gave instructions that someone always has to keep an eye on the windmil ,’ replied Liam irritably. Laura nodded at the bridge. ‘Someone would have to stay behind anyway, to lift that for them and lower it.’
He nodded. ‘True.’
‘So someone must be home.’
‘This is not good,’ he mut ered under his breath. Becks had been examining the fast-owing water. ‘I am able to cross this,’ she said.
‘The current’s too strong,’ said Liam.
‘I do not need to swim across al of it, Liam.’ She pointed along the bank on which they were standing. Fifty yards down, it rose to a moss-covered hump that was wel on its way to being undercut by the river. ‘Information: I calculate I wil be able to jump across between thirty and forty per cent of the river’s width from that point.’
He looked at her. ‘And you know how to swim?’
‘A rmative. I also know how to walk, run, jump …
talk.’
He cocked a sideways glance at her. Was that actual y sarcasm? Was that another example of Becks’s emerging sense of humour? She returned a smile.
sense of humour? She returned a smile.
‘Oh, you’re so funny, Becks.’
‘I am developing several les on humour traits.’ She nodded towards the mossy hump, changing subject. ‘I wil not be long,’ she said, turning to walk down the bank towards it.
‘Where’s she going?’ asked Whitmore, unhappy to see their robot bodyguard leaving them alone.
‘She’s going to do her superhero thing,’ said Liam. They watched in silence as she examined the river for a moment then turned to regard the height of the hump. After a few seconds she walked away from the river’s edge and came to a halt just as she was about to enter the shadowy fringe of the jungle. She turned round and without a second’s hesitation broke into a sprint towards the river.
Whitmore’s eyes rounded. ‘She’s gonna jump it?’
She bounded up the side of the hump and launched herself out across the river. Subconsciously everyone gasped and rose on their tiptoes as she graceful y sailed a dozen yards out over the water, her arms pinwheeling to give her extra momentum. Then she arced down into the water, disappearing beneath the stampeding white horses of the river.
For a long half a minute Liam couldn’t see her anywhere, then, nal y, he spot ed a dark head bobbing among the churning swirls of suds, gone again, back again, then as the river rode over a bed of large boulders and became a chicane of lethal-looking rapids, it curved round became a chicane of lethal-looking rapids, it curved round and she was lost from sight.
‘She gonna make it?’ asked Juan.
Liam nodded. ‘I’d put money on it.’
Whitmore nodded with admiration. ‘What I wouldn’t give to have her on my school’s athletics team. We’d win every cup going.’
They waited an interminable ten minutes before they spot ed her again, jogging up the riverbank on the far side. She reached their jury-rigged bridge, careful y untied the counterweight of bundled logs and then, taking on the weight of the main trunk, muscles in her arms bulging from the e ort, she slowly lowered it, the vine ropes creaking and groaning under the strain.
Above the busy rumble of the river, they heard the crack of one of the vines snapping.
‘It’s gonna go!’ shouted Liam.
It looked like Becks had heard that too. She began to pay out the rope more quickly. But another vine snapped under the increased burden, twanging up to the overhanging branch like a rubber band.
‘Stand back!’ barked Liam to the others. ‘It’s gonna drop!’
And it did. The other vines snapped in quick succession and the tree trunk swung down from its forty-ve degree angle and clat ered heavily on the boulders on their side. Everyone heard the crack, loud as a gunshot. Halfway along the trunk, jagged splinters of wood protruded from the side, and their bridge sagged down in the middle the side, and their bridge sagged down in the middle almost into the water.
‘Oh, great!’ shouted Laura.
‘Lemmesee … it may be OK,’ said Juan. Before anyone could stop him he’d stepped up on to the boulders and then careful y on to the end of the log. He inched his way a few yards along it. It bowed a lit le further, now dipping into the water itself midway along, but it seemed to be holding.
Juan dropped to his hands and knees, then straddled it, bum-shu ing his way across. At the midway point, he gingerly eased his way over the jagged fracture, water catching his dangling legs and threatening to pul him o . But he got over, and a minute later jumped o on the far side.Liam nodded. ‘Al right, then. It seems like it’l hold for us. Let’s go.’
Whitmore ushered Edward to cross rst, then had Laura, Akira and Jasmine line up to go next. Meanwhile Liam turned round. ‘Have your spears ready.’ He nodded at the dark jungle behind Howard and Whitmore. ‘They may stil be out there.’
Waiting until it’s just the one of us left? Then what?
He didn’t care to think about that.
Whitmore went after Jasmine, panting with exertion and fear as he inched his way across, the fractured trunk wobbling and creaking with each movement he made. Final y, he made it to the far side and beckoned for whoever was coming next.
whoever was coming next.
‘Leonard, you go.’
The dark-haired boy eyed Liam. ‘You sure?’
‘Uh-huh,’ replied Liam, his eyes remaining on the dark jungle. ‘Just be quick, wil you?’ he added, ashing him a quick nervous smile.
Howard nodded, and then was on the trunk and shu ing. Liam waited until the student was nearly halfway across before taking one wary step on to the end of the log. He could feel the vibration of Howard’s movements. If they’re gonna come for me … it’s gonna be right now. Then as if on cue he thought he saw movement, some dark shape leaping through the undergrowth, moving from one hiding place to the next. Get ing closer, but not quite ready to commit to leaping out into the open.
‘What is it?’ he grunted under his breath. ‘You scared of me? Is that it?’
That sounded good to him, ghting talk. For a eeting moment there he almost didn’t feel completely terri ed. But that soon passed as his eyes assured him something else had just shifted position one tree closer to him. He nal y felt the trunk under his foot wobble as Leonard presumably jumped o at the far side. He heard Whitmore’s voice over the din of tumbling water cal ing him over.
‘Coming!’ Liam shouted over his shoulder. Keeping his eyes on the jungle, he reversed on to the log, stil not daring to turn his back on what he knew was in there and waiting for him to do just that.
waiting for him to do just that.
Pul yourself together, Liam.
He dropped down to his hands and knees. Unwil ing to turn his back on the jungle, he began bum-shu ing backwards, one hand stil holding the spear half ready, in case he needed to defend himself at a moment’s notice. After a minute’s slow progress, he nal y felt a sharp splinter of wood scrape the inside of his thigh and realized he was now just before the fractured halfway point. Cool water rode up his dangling legs, soaking him to his thighs. As he shu ed to get past the jagged shards of the fractured trunk, he heard it crack and felt it lurch as it sagged lower into the river. Water suddenly rode up over his knees and over his lap, pummel ing his gut and chest like an enraged boxer sensing the faltering resolve of an opponent. Oh no … please, no.
Water. Drowning. Suddenly the fear of being snatched and torn apart by some vicious predator was matched by the idea of being snatched away by the river.
‘It’s going to break!’ shouted someone.
Liam could feel the trunk being bu eted and kicked by the strong current. It exed, creaked and twisted under the punishing weight of energy slamming into it. He realized it wasn’t going to hold out much longer and a rising tide of panic compel ed him to get o his backside and crawl. He struggled on to his hands and knees, now, nal y, turning his back on the jungle he’d moments ago thought was hiding the most frightening thing in this world. No … the most bloody frightening thing right now was No … the most bloody frightening thing right now was this churning white monster roaring hungrily at him, doing its best to pul him o . He could see the others waiting for him at the far end of the bowing log, al frantical y waving at him to get a move on.
‘Al right … al right, I’m coming!’ he yelped. He began to crawl forward on hands and knees. One hand careful y placed after the other on the treacherously wet bark. Come on, Liam, come on. You’re nearly there. He managed to make his way a yard closer to the bank, and even managed to ash the others a cavalier I’m gonna be just ne grin, when his hand found a slick patch of moss.
‘Uhh …’ was al he managed to gasp before his hand slipped round the side of the trunk and the unsupported weight of his body carried him over.
CHAPTER 63
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Suddenly he found himself spinning amid a roaring chaotic swirl of swiftly moving water. Instinctively he’d snatched a lungful of air as he’d gone under, his body doing the thinking for him while his mind shrieked uselessly with blind panic.
Drown! I’m gonna drown!
He knew it. His lungs were only going to buy him a half minute of life. His mind was al of a sudden back in the narrow con nes of a corridor groaning with the sound of stressed bulkheads, ickering wal lamps and the distant roar of ice-cold seawater nding its way up from the deck below. The certain promise of death a mile down in the cold dark embrace of the ocean.
Oh no, no, no, no, not this! Not like this!
Then his head suddenly broke the surface. He ailed in the foam, stil holding on to the stale breath in his lungs. He caught sight of their log bridge thirty or forty yards behind him already and fast disappearing as the swift current carried him away.
His legs thumped heavily against a boulder and he found himself being rol ed over its hard rounded surface. His head again under the water, his ears l ed with the His head again under the water, his ears l ed with the pounding roar of the river, he felt himself being sucked down deep by a spiral ing current, pressure compressing his chest.
Panic. Sheer, blinding panic robbed his mind of any useful conscious thought and left him with a curdling mental scream, knowing this dark roaring depth was where it was al going to come to an end for him. But the river’s mischievous current decided to play one more game with him and shot him to the surface to say goodbye to life and air and trees and the crimson sky of later afternoon once more. Liam gasped for another lungful of air, half aware that perhaps the kindest thing he could do was simply breathe out and prepare his mouth, his throat, his lungs for an invasion of water. But then his shoulder thudded hard against something. Something he could grasp hold of and ght the incredible pul of the river. He opened his eyes and realized it was a fal en tree. For a moment he wondered if the river had carried him right the way round their island in some logicdefying loop-the-loop and he was right back where their crudely constructed bridge was.
He desperately grappled with the rough bark and the smal leafy branches that sprouted from it, merciful handholds that their smooth and straight trunk had lacked. From branch to branch he managed to pul himself out of the strong current in the middle of the river to some calmer eddies of swirling water.
Final y his foot brushed against the river bot om, Final y his foot brushed against the river bot om, scat ering pebbles, and his feet desperately fumbled for rmer footing that promised to stay beneath him. His hands fol owed the fal en tree, pul ing on thicker, more reliable branches until he found himself wading out of the river, nal y col apsing on hands and knees on wet shingle that shifted and clat ered noisily beneath him.
‘Urgh,’ he splut ered, between ragged gasps of breath. His breath was stil pounding in and out as he nal y pul ed himself, exhausted, to his feet. He turned to look at the fal en tree, trying to get his bearings and work out which side of the river he was now standing on. The base of the tree was on the far side; he could see a frayed and splintered stump that looked like it had been hacked at by a team of inept carpenters armed with blunt chisels … or beavers even.
Not beavers, obviously. Perhaps some species of termite had cannibalized the tree, or it had simply rot ed and split. Either way, he thanked it for saving his life. He noticed a mess of disturbed shingle and footprints around him among the leaves and branches of the fel ed tree and realized that perhaps Lam and the others must have fel ed the tree for wood, but foolishly al owed it to fal across the river and just left it.
Idiots.
The rst thing he’d do once he found them was get them to heave the tree back into the water and let it be carried away. He turned round and squinted up the riverbank. Through a hundred yards of jungle he could just riverbank. Through a hundred yards of jungle he could just about make out crimson slivers of waning sunlight, the trees thinning, the clearing beyond … and their camp. He’d lost his spear in the river. No mat er, he was on the safe side now. He made his way up the shingle and into the narrow apron of jungle. Up ahead through the dangling loops of vine he could see the sun casting long shadows across the leafy hummocks of their shelters and the wooden wal of their smal palisade as it began to make a bed on the horizon. But, as yet, he couldn’t make out Lam and the other three kids they’d left behind. Where are they?
‘Hel o-o-o-o! ’ he cal ed out again, his voice ricocheting through the jungle.
A few moments later he was stepping out from beneath the dark canopy of foliage and into the clearing. On the very far side, he could see Becks and the others emerging. He waved at them. ‘Hey!’
He saw their heads turn his way and their mouths form sudden dark ovals of surprise and relief.
‘I made it! I’m al right!’ he cal ed across to them. ‘I’m ne! Have you seen the others?’
Becks led them across the clearing towards Liam until nal y they converged around the smouldering remains of a camp re.
‘The others have not been located,’ said Becks. Liam noticed their smal turbine wasn’t spinning. The cross-bar was split and the school bag was on the ground, its load of round pebbles spil ed. ‘The windmil ’s broken. its load of round pebbles spil ed. ‘The windmil ’s broken. What’s happened?’
There were no answers.
‘We should get that running again rst,’ he continued. He looked around at the others. ‘Maybe they’re out looking for us?’
Becks strode swiftly towards the contraption to see whether a quick repair could be made. Liam was about to pass on some instructions to the others to split up and search for the others when he noted Jasmine’s gaze, wideeyed and lost on some detail everyone else seemed to have missed.
‘Jasmine? You al right?’
She pointed at the ground. ‘That,’ she whispered.
‘What’s that?’
Liam fol owed her gaze down to the ground. Nestled amid a cluster of pebbles, cones and the dry brown decaying leaves of long-dead ferns, he saw a pale slender object that looked to him like an impossibly large maggot. He took a step towards it and noted the ground was stained dark around it, and at one end of it, pointed yel ow-white shards poked out like the antennae of a shrimp.
He felt his stomach lurch and ip in a slow, queasy somersault.
It was someone’s index nger. The antennae, shards of bone.
‘What is it?’ asked Whitmore, stooping to get a bet er look. ‘My God! Is that a nger?’
look. ‘My God! Is that a nger?’
The conclusion hit Liam like a punch. ‘They’re here.’ He looked up at them. ‘Those pack hunters are here, on the island.’
Whitmore’s mouth apped open and shut and produced nothing helpful.
‘How?’ asked Howard. ‘It’s impossible. No way those things can swim across!’
‘They don’t need to.’ He looked at the others. ‘They went and copied us … learned from us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I think they made their own bridge.’
CHAPTER 64
2001, New York
Everything in the archway died, leaving them in pitch black.
‘What’s going on?’ cried Cartwright.
‘Please!’ cried Maddy in the dark. ‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! It’s nothing I did!’
‘Stay right where you are!’ snapped Cartwright. ‘I hear you move or do anything and I’l re!’
‘O-OK … we’re not moving, are we, Sal?’
‘Nope. Sit ing stil . Doing nothing.’
‘Just hang on, Cartwright,’ said Maddy, ‘just a second …
the generator should kick in any time now.’
On cue, from the back room, came the rumbling of the generator ring up. A moment later the strip light in the middle of the archway ickered once, twice with a dink, dink, then stayed on.
They al stared silently at each other as the monitors ickered in unison, the computer system rebooting itself.
‘What just happened?’ demanded Cartwright.
‘I dunno yet …’ said Maddy.
‘That was a time wave,’ said Sal.
‘A what?’
‘Time wave,’ she repeated. ‘Something big changed in
‘Time wave,’ she repeated. ‘Something big changed in the past and it’s just now caught up with us.’
Maddy nodded unhappily. ‘Yeah … she’s right. That’s exactly what that was.’
Cartwright looked at both the girls, then at Forby, who returned nothing more useful than a calm professional stare. ‘Wel ?’ said the old man. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means outside this archway, outside the perimeter of our eld-o ce time shield, things have changed,’
explained Maddy. ‘Changed a lot … if we lost power.’
‘So, what’s out there now?’ he asked.
Maddy splayed her hands. ‘I don’t know! Another version of New York, I guess.’
Cartwright’s eyes widened to rheumy bloodshot pools.
‘Forby, go take a look.’
‘Yes, sir.’ He stepped across the archway and hit the green but on. Nothing happened. ‘Won’t open.’
‘The doorway’s not on the generator circuit,’ said Maddy. ‘Just crank it up with the handle. There,’ she said, pointing. Forby saw the smal metal handle, nodded and started turning it round.
The computer had nished rebooting and Bob’s dialogue box popped up.
> We are running on auxiliary power. Resume density probing?
Maddy turned in her chair, back towards the monitors.
‘How much more probing have you got to do?’
> Information: 177,931 candidate density soundings made.
made.
She made a face – less than half the total number that Bob had calculated they needed to make.
‘Are there any good suspects?’
> There are 706 soundings so far in which a density uctuation occurred.
‘Can you narrow that down any?’
> A rmative: I can analyse the interruption signatures returned and identify those that demonstrate a repeat or an arti cial rhythm.
‘Uh … lemme think.’ She bit a ragged edge around her ngernail. ‘But you’re only, like, halfway through doing the probes?’
> Less than halfway.
‘And if you stop now we might miss them,’ she thought out loud.
> A rmative.
‘But now we’re on generator power, have you got enough power to do al those probes, and open a window too if we nd them?’
> I do not have enough data to answer that question, Maddy.
‘Can you guess?’
> I do not have enough data to answer that question, Maddy.
She cursed. ‘Al right … so you’re saying it’s possible we’l run out of juice if you carry on doing the probes, right?’
> A rmative.
> A rmative.
The rat ling of the cranking shut er door coming from across the archway suddenly ceased.
‘OK, Bob,’ she sighed, burying her face in her hands with weary frustration. ‘OK … OK. Al right, then. Stop with what you’re doing and analyse what we’ve got already. See if we’ve got a hit.’
> A rmative.
‘What the –!’ That was Forby.
‘JESUS!’ That was Cartwright.
Maddy spun round in her chair and saw the pair of them standing in the middle of the opened shut er doorway, staring out at a canvas of emerald-green jungle. She sighed. Oh no, not again.
Last time a time wave had arrived like this one, large enough to sever the feed of power into their eld o ce, it had left New York a post-apocalyptic wilderness of tumbledown ruins under a poisoned rust-red sky. She and Sal hurried over towards the open entrance.
‘Jahul a!’ gasped Sal as they joined the other two. And Maddy nodded. Jahul a indeed.
This time New York was gone, not just shat ered ruins, but gone as in never existed. She looked down at her feet. Their cold and pit ed concrete oor simply ended in a straight line where their invisible force eld’s e ect terminated. The ground beyond was a rich brown soil, carpeted in a mat of tal grass and lush clusters of lowgrowing ferns and other unidenti able foliage. She looked up and saw no Wil iamsburg Bridge, no She looked up and saw no Wil iamsburg Bridge, no horizon of Manhat an skyscrapers, just a broad, sedate river delta of lush rainforest.
‘Uh … how … how did we end up in the middle of a jungle, sir?’ asked Forby.
A slow, understanding smile spread across Cartwright’s face. Final y he nodded. ‘Incredible,’ he whispered, his eyes wide like a child’s, ful of wonder. A solitary tear rol ed down one of his craggy cheeks. ‘This is quite …
incredible.’
‘Sir?’ Forby turned to him. His calm, professional demeanour had vanished and been replaced with barely contained panic. ‘Sir, where the hel are we?’
‘We haven’t moved anywhere,’ the old man replied. He turned to look at Maddy. ‘Or anywhen? Have we? We’re exactly when and where we were.’
‘That’s right,’ she replied. ‘But an alternate history has just caught up with us.’
Cartwright’s ragged features seemed to look ten years younger. The face of a child catching a glimpse of the tooth fairy, or a glint of Santa’s sleigh disappearing into a distant moonlit cloud bank.
‘Sir? The other men? Where are they?’
‘Gone, Forby,’ he replied in a distracted whisper. ‘Gone.’
‘They’re dead?’
‘Nope. They were just never born,’ said Sal.
‘I want to see more,’ ut ered Cartwright, stepping o the concrete on to the soft ground beyond. He grinned. ‘My God! This is real? Isn’t it?’
God! This is real? Isn’t it?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘It’s another reality. How New York might have ended up if … if …’
‘If what?’ asked Forby.
‘That’s just it,’ she replied. ‘We don’t know yet. My guess is it’s some change caused by our col eague in the past. I’m sure it wasn’t intentional.’
Forby shook his head. ‘You’re tel ing me one person can actual y change a whole … world?’
Cartwright sighed, clearly frustrated by the narrowminded thinking of his subordinate. ‘Of course, Forby. Think about it, man. If … if a certain Jewish carpenter hadn’t made his mark two thousand years ago, it wouldn’t be In God We Trust on a dol ar note, but Gods.’
Forby frowned. A patriot. No one dissed the mighty dol ar. Not on his watch.
‘And our friend’s much much further back in time than Jesus,’ added Sal.
‘Smal changes in the past,’ quoted Maddy,
remembering the rst time Foster had spoken to them, bringing them that tray of co ees and doughnuts, a simple and strangely reassuring gesture in that surreal moment of awakening. ‘Smal changes in the past can make enormous changes in the present.’
Cartwright glanced towards the nearby riverbank. ‘We should go and explore a lit le –’ He stopped dead in his tracks.
‘Look!’
Maddy fol owed his wavering nger, pointing across the Maddy fol owed his wavering nger, pointing across the broad river to the low hump of island that was once Manhat an. She squinted painful y, her eyes not so great without glasses. She managed to detect the slightest sense of movement. ‘What is it?’
‘People?’ ut ered Sal. ‘Yes … it’s people!’
‘A set lement of some kind,’ added Cartwright. She thought she could make out a cluster of circular dwel ings down by the waterside and several pale thin plumes of smoke rising up into the sky.
‘Look,’ said Forby, ‘there’s a boat.’
Halfway across the river, calm and subdued, barely a ripple upon its glass-smooth surface, was the long dark outline of some canoe. Aboard they could see half a dozen gures paddling the vessel across the river towards them.
‘They look odd,’ said Sal, shading her eyes from the sun.
‘They’re … they’re moving al funny.’
Cartwright seemed eager to rush down to the riverside and greet them. ‘We should go and make contact.’
‘No,’ said Maddy. ‘Real y, I don’t think we should.’
‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘The things we could learn from each other! The knowledge of another –’
‘Maybe the girl’s right,’ said Forby. ‘They could be hostile, sir.’
He shook his head, his face an expression of bemusement. ‘This is an incredible moment of history!’
‘But that’s just it … this isn’t history. This isn’t meant to happen,’ said Maddy. ‘Those people shouldn’t exist. This is a what if reality … this is a never shoulda happened a what if reality … this is a never shoulda happened reality, Cartwright. Do you get it? The last thing we need to do is go and make friends with it.’
‘I’m not so sure they’re people, anyway,’ said Sal, quietly watching the canoe approach the nearby riverbank. A hundred and fty yards away, the long canoe rode up graceful y on to the silt. The gures aboard the boat put down their paddles in the bot om and began, one by one, to jump o the front and on to the mud.
Even Maddy could now make out that they weren’t human.
‘My God, look at their legs,’ whispered Forby. ‘Like …
just like goat’s legs, dog’s legs.’
‘Dinosaur legs,’ added Cartwright. ‘In fact, therapod legs. A bit like velociraptors.’
‘Forget their legs,’ said Sal, ‘check out their heads!’
Maddy squinted, wondering whether her eyes were playing tricks on her. ‘They look like bananas?’
‘Elongated,’ said Forby, shaking his own head. ‘Weirdest damned thing I ever seen. They look sort of extraterrestrial.’ He turned to the others, his voice lowered. ‘My God! Do you think that’s what they are? A species of alien that’s arrived and colonized our world?’
Cartwright dismissed the man. ‘The legs suggest some possible ancestral link to dinosaurs. The heads? Damned if I know where that shape has come from.’
They watched the creatures spread out along the silt, holding spears in their hands and probing the mud with them.
them.
‘What are they doing, do you think?’ asked Maddy. As if in answer to her question, some unrecognizable pig-sized creature emerged from a hole in the mud and scurried across the silt towards another hole. The nearest of the banana-heads quickly raised his spear and threw it with practised e ciency. It skewered the smal creature, and left it struggling and squealing on its side.
‘Hunting!’ said Forby a lit le too loudly.
One of the creatures suddenly turned to glance their way. The four of them instinctively hunkered down behind the gently waving fronds of a large fern.
‘Think he saw us?’ hissed Forby through grit ed teeth. Maddy looked up at the ragged outline of red brickwork around the corrugated shut er door, the portion of the bridge support that existed within the archway’s eld. Luckily most of it was shielded by a giant species of tree she didn’t recognize; drooping waxy leaves the size of umbrel as hung low over them. A perfect camou age.
‘I think we’re hidden,’ she whispered.
They watched through gaps in the swaying leaves as the creature, stil curious, slowly paced up the silty bank towards them, cocking its long head curiously on to one side. Closer now, they could see a lean hairless body covered with an olive skin, an expressionless face of bone and cartilage and a lipless mouth ful of razor-sharp teeth.
‘It’s real y ugly,’ o ered Sal in a whisper. ‘I real y don’t want to go make friends with it.’
Maddy noticed Forby raising his gun warily, a nger Maddy noticed Forby raising his gun warily, a nger slipping across the trigger. She nudged him gently and shook her head.
Don’t.
He nodded.
‘It’s beautiful,’ whispered Cartwright. ‘What a magni cent creature! Look at it!’
For a moment it lingered there, scanning the rainforest in front of it, not seeming to spot them or the squat brick shape of their archway. Then, nal y, it seemed to shrug, turn away and head back towards the others, cal ing something out with a mewling whine and a clack of its sharp teeth.
‘I’ve seen enough. We should go back inside,’ said Maddy. ‘There’s work to be done.’
‘Don’t you want to learn more?’ asked Cartwright. She shrugged. ‘Why? If we’ve managed to get lucky and locate Liam … then none of this wil ever have happened.’
She looked at Forby, who seemed relieved at the idea of heading back. ‘Be pointless learning anything about these things real y … if you think about it. They soon wil belong to the world of Never Were.’
Cartwright made a face, a mixture of disappointment and frustration. ‘Al right,’ he conceded. ‘Let’s get on with it.’
CHAPTER 65
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
‘Did you hear that?’ said Laura, her eyes round with fear. They’d heard it al right. Although the jungle was soon due to stir with its concert of nocturnal cries and cal s, the sun had only just slipped from the sky, leaving behind thin combed cirrus clouds stained a coral pink from its waning light. The jungle was on the turn, the stil ness between those that lived in the day and those that prowled the night.
But there it was again. A desperate female cry for help. It was one of the four they’d left behind, either Keisha Jackson or Sophia Yip.
‘… Please … help me …’
‘It’s Keisha!’ said Jasmine. She turned to the others. ‘It is! It’s Keisha!’
‘Which direction did it come from?’ asked Liam. It wasn’t far o , somewhere within the apron of jungle around their clearing. Could be coming from any direction, the mischievous way voices seemed to bounce around.
‘… Help … it hurts …’
‘We have to go help her!’ said Edward.
‘Negative,’ said Becks. ‘The hominids could stil be on the island.’
the island.’
Laura’s eyes darted back to the nger on the ground. The light was get ing dim enough for it to be almost, merciful y, easy to overlook. ‘Could be?’ she exclaimed.
‘They’re h-here, al right.’
‘Or they’ve been and gone,’ added Whitmore. He looked at Liam. ‘We’ve got to go help the poor girl! She could be dying!’
‘… Please …’
Whitmore nodded across the clearing. ‘It came from over there.’ He grabbed a spear and turned to the others.
‘I’l need help lifting her.’
Edward grabbed a spear and joined him. Howard and Juan did likewise.
‘OK,’ said Liam, ‘go get her.’ He turned to Laura, Akira and Jasmine. ‘We need this re going again. Can you see to that? Big re, al right? Big as you can make it.’ They both nodded. ‘And, Becks, we need that windmil contraption running.’
She nodded. ‘A rmative.’
‘And, al of you,’ he cal ed out, particularly to Whitmore and the others already jogging in the direction they hoped to nd Keisha, ‘al of you, stay close together! No one goes on their own!’
He watched them go, four of them al armed with spears. In the jungle on their way back from laying down their clay tablets, they’d been in nitely more vulnerable to ambush, and yet the creatures had warily held back …
only jumping Kel y, he presumed, because he’d been only jumping Kel y, he presumed, because he’d been entirely on his own.
He looked anxiously around the clearing. The girls were just a dozen yards away working on the re, and Becks merely thirty yards from him, busy trying to re-jig the windmil . Liam tried to think quickly. He wasn’t exactly alone here in the middle of the clearing, but he’d have felt happier having another one or two people standing right beside him. His eyes darted to the dark entrances of a couple of the nearby lean-tos, the smal gateway to their palisade, possible hiding places. Possibly containing one or two of them.
Liam. Stay calm, Liam. Stay calm.
Broken Claw watched the new creatures approach. Four of them armed with their kil ing sticks.
He turned to the others, crouched nearby, and softly hissed for them to make ready. He turned towards the younger one, crouched next to him. The youngest ones of the pack were best at this particular skil – mimicking the cal s of wounded prey – their voice-boxes being smal er, al owing them a much higher pitch, the shril pitch of fear and desperation.
He clacked his claws gently, instructing the young one to do it once again.
The young female’s jaw opened, and her tongue and voice skilful y reproduced the cries the female new creature had been making earlier today as she lay dying from a fatal stomach wound.
from a fatal stomach wound.
‘… Help me … please …’
They changed direction, veering directly towards Broken Claw and the others, just a few dozen yards away now, stepping out of the clearing and into the darkness of the jungle. The new creatures seemed to have absolutely no sense of how close to danger they were, their smal seemingly ine ective noses unable to detect the smel s that l ed Broken Claw’s nasal cavity: the smel of excitement from his pack, the smel of anticipation of a ne kil , the smel of their dark-skinned female brethren lying dead amid the ferns nearby – bled out hours ago.
How could they not smel any of this?
These creatures were either foolish or incapable of sensing al the warning signals in the air around them, stumbling blindly. Certainly – he understood this now –
nothing for his pack to be wary of any more. He’d learned enough about them: that they were as vulnerable as the larger plant-eaters they usual y hunted, more vulnerable, in fact, since they had neither their weight or strength to throw around.
And now … Broken Claw and several of the stronger males in his pack now possessed sticks-that-kil . The four long digits on each of his hands tightened round the thick bamboo shaft. Broken Claw was determined to use his stick-that-kil s on one of them as he had that older male earlier this morning up in the hil s. A fascinating way of delivering death. An intriguing tool of death.
Juan stopped and pointed at a splotch of drying blood on the back of a broad waxy leaf.
‘Keisha!’ he cal ed out. ‘You here?’
The four of them stood perfectly stil , listening to the gentle hiss of shifting leaves above them and the fading echo of Juan’s voice.
‘Keisha!’ he cal ed out again.
Then, very softly, not a crying-out voice trying to be heard across acres of jungle, but a soft whimpering closeby murmur. ‘… Please … help me …’
‘Where are you?’ asked Whitmore. ‘We can’t see you!’
‘… Help me …’
‘Where are you, Keisha? Can you see us?’
‘… Please … please …’
Juan cocked his head. ‘That don’t sound like her, man.’
Edward nodded. ‘She sounds kind of funny.’
‘… Sophia … run …’
Whitmore’s eyes narrowed. ‘Keisha?’
‘… They kil ed Jonah …’
Juan looked silently at the others. His face spoke for him. That real y isn’t her.
Whitmore nodded and then slowly placed a nger to his lips. He waved his hands at them to back up the way they’d come. Fifteen … twenty yards of jungle, that’s al , then they’d be out in the clearing again.
They’d just begun to careful y retrace their steps when Juan suddenly convulsed, burping a trickle of blood down Juan suddenly convulsed, burping a trickle of blood down the front of his varsity sweatshirt. He looked slowly down at the six inches of sharpened bamboo tip that protruded from his bel y.
‘Oh … oh, man …’ was about al he could say before his eyes rol ed and his legs buckled beneath him. Crouching behind Juan’s col apsed form was one of the bipedal creatures, its long head cocked with curiosity and its yel ow eyes marvel ing at the spear in its hands.
‘RUN!’ screamed Whitmore to the other two. ‘IT’S A TRAP!’
Howard and Edward turned on their heels to head back towards the clearing, only to face another pair of those creatures, springing seemingly out of nowhere. Howard lunged quickly with his spear, catching one of them in the thigh. The creature recoiled with a scream.
‘GO!’ screamed Howard, pushing Edward away from the creatures. Meanwhile, Whitmore found himself trapped by a closing circle of four of them.
‘You r-real y … are … c-clever … aren’t you?’ he found himself babbling through trembling lips. A couple of them were holding spears just like he was holding his. ‘My GGod … you’ve learned f-fast … haven’t you?’
The creature that had speared Juan stepped over his body and approached Whitmore with an unset ling raptorlike bobbing movement. The creature barked an order to some more of its kind hiding in the undergrowth and Whitmore heard the thud of feet and the swish of branches icked aside as several set o in pursuit of the other two icked aside as several set o in pursuit of the other two boys.
Now it cocked its head, its yel ow eyes drinking him in, eyes that burned with intel igence and curiosity and a thousand questions it probably wanted to ask, but hadn’t yet developed a sophisticated enough language to know how to ask.
‘I … I know … you can c-communicate …’ Whitmore babbled, his man’s voice broken and mewling now like a child’s. ‘S-s-so … can w-we. W-we’re the s-same. Y-you,’ he said slowly, pointing a shaking nger towards the creature.
‘M-me … me,’ he said, gesturing to himself. ‘We’re the ssame!’
Its long head protruded forward on the end of a fragile, almost feminine, neck.
‘Th-the same … the same,’ whimpered Whitmore.
‘Intel i-intel igent.’
Whitmore was only vaguely aware of his bladder let ing loose, a warm trickle running down his left leg and soaking his sock. A smal detail. A faraway detail. Right in front of his own face, only inches away, his world was this bony carapace of another face and yel ow piercing reptile eyes that seemed to grow ever larger.
Its jaw snapped open, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth and a twisting, leathery black tongue that furled and unfurled like an angry snake in a cage.
Whitmore let go of his spear and it clat ered to the ground between them. ‘Do … d-do you s-see? No n-no harm. I m-mean y-you no h-harm!’
harm. I m-mean y-you no h-harm!’
The tongue twisted and coiled and Whitmore heard an odd facsimile of his own voice coming right back at him.
‘… No h-harm … the s-same …’
He nodded. ‘Y-yes! Y-y-es! W-we-we’re intel i–’
Whitmore felt a punch to his chest. It winded him – like a medicine bal launched at his thorax. He gasped, spat ering a ne spray of blood on to the creature’s expressionless face. He would have doubled over from the blow, but claws from behind were holding him up on his feet. The yel ow eyes inches in front of him looked down at something. Al of a sudden, feeling oddly dizzy and lightheaded, he decided the polite thing was to do the same.
And there it was in the palm of the creature’s hand, his own heart stil dutiful y beating away.
CHAPTER 66
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Howard and Edward stumbled through the jungle, skirting the clearing but unable to get to it because one of the creatures was deliberately blocking them.
‘Clever,’ wheezed Howard. Keeping them bot led up here amid tree trunks and dangling loops of vine, it prevented them making big sweeping strikes with their spear and hatchet; the blade or shaft was bound to get tangled or caught on something.
One beast was behind them and another to their left, preventing them from making their way to the encircling river … not that they’d be able to go anywhere. The pursuer behind them could easily have caught up, but he remained a steadfast dozen yards behind. He realized then that they were just wearing them out, pursuing the pair of them through the tangled undergrowth until they were certain they were spent and unable to o er much of a ght.
Howard stopped. Edward, who’d been supporting his weight on the right leg, gasped. ‘Uh? We got to run!’
Howard shook his head, nding his breath. ‘No …
they’re playing with us. Herding us.’
Al three of the hominids pursuing them came to a halt Al three of the hominids pursuing them came to a halt a dozen yards away on each side and waited patiently for their next move, yel ow eyes peering at them through thin veils of dangling, looping vines.
Howard nodded to the clearing, the edge of it fty yards to their right. The creature blocking that way had ducked down out of sight. ‘That’s the way we should be heading.’
Edward swal owed nervously. ‘But … one of th-those –’
‘I know.’ He sucked in breath again. ‘He’s in there somewhere … but you have to make a break for it, run for the palisade.’
‘What about you?’
He shook his head. ‘I won’t make it … I can’t run … I’l buy you time.’
‘You … y-you’l die!’
Howard nodded, smiled even. ‘Sure, I gured that.’
Edward grabbed his arm. ‘We c-can both run!’
‘Don’t argue. There isn’t time for this. Listen.’ He grabbed the boy’s shoulder. ‘Run, save your life. Make it back home. But promise me something.’ He glanced over Edward’s shoulder; one of the creatures was shifting position, impatient for a kil and stepping closer. ‘Promise me to dedicate your talent to something else … not time travel, Edward … anything but time travel!’
Edward’s eyes were on the other two creatures.
‘Promise me!’
He nodded. ‘Yes! Y-yes … OK!’
‘No time travel, Edward. It’l kil us al ; it’l destroy the world … God help us, perhaps even the universe. Do you world … God help us, perhaps even the universe. Do you understand?’ he said, shaking the boy’s shoulder. The creatures inched warily closer, long athletic legs graceful y stepping over the uneven jungle oor towards them, their lean bodies bobbing with coiled energy.
‘Please …’ he hissed. ‘Please tel me you understand.’
Edward’s eyes met his. He was crying. ‘Yes … I ppromise. I promise!’
Howard ru ed his hair. ‘Good.’ He took the hatchet in one hand and grasped the spear in the other.
‘Now, when I say,’ he said softly, ‘you run, Ed. You run for al it’s worth. You understand?’
The boy nodded.
Howard could see the creature between them and the clearing now. Its head bobbed up and ducked behind a large fern, no longer trying to hide, but clearly stil very wary of them.
Good. Then he’d take advantage of that.
‘Ready?’ he whispered.
Edward nodded silently. His cheeks shone with tears; his lips clamped shut, trembling.
Without any warning Howard roared ‘Waaarrghhhh!’
and charged forward towards the creature cowering behind the fern. The creature leaped back, an almost comical bunny hop of surprise as Howard crashed through the undergrowth towards it. He stumbled through a cluster of ferns, swinging his hatchet at the creature as it recoiled, stil o balance. The jagged blade caught something and stil o balance. The jagged blade caught something and the creature screamed.
Howard spun round and reached for Edward. ‘GO!’ he shouted, grabbing the scru of his col ar and pul ing him forward. ‘GO, GO, GO!’ He pushed the boy forward with a rough punch to the smal of his back.
Edward scrambled past the writhing creature, across a dozen yards of stunted plants and thinning saplings, ducking loops of thorny vines that promised to snarl his throat like barbed wire.
The boy was fast and agile and smal enough to make a bet er job of dodging the jungle obstacles. Howard turned his at ention to the creature beside him, snapping and clacking teeth as it got to its feet and warily circled him, leaking dark blood from the gash on its leg. I’m ready for this, he told himself. I’m ready for this. I’m ready. I’m ready. I’m ready to die.
His mantra back in the lab, back when he was approaching Edward Chan and ngering the gun in his bag. He’d been ready to die then for a cause only a few seemed to truly understand. He was just as ready to die now.
Just as long as the boy keeps his promise.
There was no knowing, but instinct, hope … told Howard that Edward had seen enough of the nightmare of time travel for himself to know that his unique talent could never be al owed to nd its voice.
And that’s al that mat ers. Right?
Howard stared down the creature in front of him. Howard stared down the creature in front of him.
‘Mission completed,’ he ut ered to himself with a growing smile spread across his boyish face.
‘Come on, then, ugly,’ he said, advancing on the thing just as the leaves behind him shu ed and swayed with the arrival of the other two, ready to nish him o .
CHAPTER 67
2001, New York
They returned to the archway and Forby wound the shut er down again.
‘So,’ said the man as he shouldered his assault ri e and cranked the handle. ‘What I don’t get is if this is stil a version of the year 2001 how come those dino-humans out there aren’t a lot more advanced?’
Maddy and Sal looked at each other. ‘I dunno,’ said Maddy. ‘I’m no anthropologist.’
‘It’s a good question, Forby,’ said Cartwright. He turned round and crouched to get one last look out at the rainforest version of the Hudson River delta, and the far-o cluster of rounded huts on the muddy banks of Manhat an island. ‘A good question … and I’l hazard a guess. They’re a dead-end branch of evolution.’
Forby looked at him. ‘Sir?’
‘Those things out there –’ he icked a nger out at the narrowing window of alternative world outside – ‘if they real y are the direct descendants of some species that survived the end of the Cretaceous era, a species that somehow survived as a result of something that’s been changed –’ he looked at the girls – ‘by your friend, then they’ve been around for tens of mil ions of years.’
they’ve been around for tens of mil ions of years.’
‘Wel , that’s exactly my point, sir. How come they aren’t light-years more advanced than humans? How come there isn’t some gigantic lizard version of Futurama out there?’
Forby nished cranking the shut er down. The archway was dim once more, lit by the sterile zzing glow of the ceiling tube light.
‘They plateaued,’ said Cartwright. ‘Perhaps their species evolved to the best it could possibly be. And then just stopped.’
Sal made a face. ‘I thought evolution never stopped. I thought it always changed, always, like, adapting.’
‘Oh, but it does and can stop,’ he replied. ‘There are species alive today that are virtual y identical to their distant prehistoric ancestors – sharks, for example. Nature had evolved them to be perfect for their environment, perfect kil ing machines … why bother adapting any further?’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps in this world, those reptilian hominids out there are the dominant predator, with nothing to compete against … and have been that way for mil ions of years?
‘Evolution is nature’s way of problem solving. If something changes that chal enges a species’ ability to survive, then that stimulates an adaptive response. If there’s nothing to chal enge a species’ existence, then why would it ever need to change?’ Cartwright shrugged. ‘A dead-end of evolution.’
‘A dead-end world,’ echoed Forby.
They made their way across the dim archway. ‘On the They made their way across the dim archway. ‘On the other hand, maybe there’s some practical limit to how much smarter that species outside can get? Maybe those long heads are already too heavy to develop any greater cranial capacity?’
‘So their brains wil never get any bigger?’
‘That’s right. And they’l never do any bet er than spears, mud huts and dugout canoes.’
‘Wel ,’ said Maddy, approaching the desk, ‘whatever. We’l never know, because those creepy-looking things weren’t meant to happen.’ She sat down at the computer desk. ‘Bob, how’re you doing with those candidate signals?
’ > Analysis completed. The last 1,507 density soundings before you ordered me to cease the sweep indicated the immediate location was occupied by a permanent physical obstruction. This could be a natural intrusion, for example a fal en tree or a geological event.
‘So, before that?’ Maddy asked impatiently.
The others joined her at the desk.
> A total of 227 transient density warnings. Cartwright squat ed down beside her and studied the dialogue box. ‘That means what? So now you’re down to two hundred and twenty-seven possible locations for your friend?’
Maddy nodded. ‘Can we lter that any further?’
> A rmative. 219 were single-incursion events. Of the remaining eight density signatures that demonstrated a repeated incursion, only one demonstrated a regularly repeated incursion, only one demonstrated a regularly timed signature.
Sal bit her lip with excitement. ‘That’s it! Surely? That’s got to be it!’
> A rmative, Sal. There is a high probability that this is the correct time-stamp.
‘YES!’ said Maddy, spinning round in her chair, her hand raised for a high-ve. Sal obliged with a hearty slap and a shriek of excitement.
Cartwright smiled. ‘I presume that means you’ve found your friend?’
‘Yes … see?’ Maddy grinned proudly. ‘I told you we could do it!’
‘So then … what happens now?’
She spun back to face the monitors in front of her.
‘Bob? We’re good to begin charging up to open a portal?’
> Information: we have a 24-hour time period identi ed in which to open a window.
‘Hmm.’ Maddy pul ed absently on her top lip. ‘Twentyfour hours. But when exactly do we open it?’
Cartwright looked vexed and impatient.
‘We have to be sure they’re there, right?’ said Sal on Maddy’s behalf. ‘You know? Before we commit to opening a portal. If we spend the stored charge and they’re not there, we’ve gone and wasted it.’
Maddy nodded. ‘We’l only have enough stored energy to open one, maybe two windows. How do we make sure they’re actual y right there and ready and waiting to come through, though?’
through, though?’
‘Hang on!’ cut in Cartwright. ‘You just said “they”. Are you tel ing me there’s more than just your friend stuck back there?’
Sal nodded. ‘Yes, Liam … and some others … children that were caught up in an accident.’
‘Good God,’ the old man whispered. ‘Accident? This was an accident? What the heck have you people been up to?’‘It was a training incident,’ cut in Sal, ‘that’s al . It went wrong. These things happen from time to time.’
> Information: it wil be possible to open a series of pinhole windows and obtain a smal -resolution image of the target location.
‘Right.’ Maddy nodded. ‘Right … then we could see exactly when – during the day – there’s somebody standing around. Yes … yes, good idea, Bob. Let’s proceed with that.’
> A rmative.
Cartwright sighed. ‘So what’s happening now?’ Clearly impatient to see the displacement machine actual y nal y running.
Maddy turned to look over her shoulder. ‘We’re taking some images of the portal location to make sure that when we open the window they’re ready and waiting to come through.’
‘Why don’t you just open your portal and see for yourself?’
‘Sal just explained that. We could be wasting a ful
‘Sal just explained that. We could be wasting a ful power-up, and we can’t risk doing that.’ Maddy shrugged.
‘Anyway, wouldn’t you want to check rst? This is the Cretaceous era, right? That means dinosaurs. I’d want to know the coast is clear of T-rexes rst. Don’t you?’
The old man glanced at Forby and the man shook his head quickly. ‘Taking a few photos rst sounds like a pret y good move to me, sir.’
Cartwright laughed nervously. ‘Uh, I guess you’re right. OK … we’l do it your way. Just get a move on before those hunters down the beach nd a railway arch in the middle of their jungle.’
CHAPTER 68
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
The three girls had revived the smouldering re; the dried brit le moss that seemed to carpet every boulder and rock made perfect kindling and already a thick column of smoke was drifting up into the evening sky.
Liam felt a lit le happier now. Fire had seemed to keep those creatures at bay during the last few nights that they’d been out on their errand. They seemed to have a healthy respect for it – actual y, to be more precise, a morbid fear of it.
He looked up across the twilit clearing. It had got dark very quickly. He wondered how the others were doing with Keisha. Surely they must have found her by now? If those pack hunters real y had fel ed that tree and made their way across, then he was surprised they’d al owed her to live.
He was considering that point when he heard two sounds at the same time: one a far-o scream, shril and terrifying that rat led around the clearing like a gunshot, and the other the sound of approaching trainers slapping the hard ground. He exchanged a hurried glance with the girls, and with Becks as she stopped ddling with their damaged windmil and snapped erect like a spooked damaged windmil and snapped erect like a spooked meerkat.
‘Help!’ He heard Edward’s voice through the gathering gloom, and then a moment later picked out of that gloom the dancing outline of his pale T-shirt.
‘Edward! What’s up?’
The boy joined him, gasping and looking anxiously back over his shoulder. ‘They’re h-here! THEY’RE HERE!’
Liam fol owed his gaze and saw nothing across the clearing, just the dark outline of the apron of jungle.
‘Where are the others?’
The boy ignored his question, his eyes wide with terror.
‘Th-they’re h-here, they’re h-here!’
Liam grasped his arm rmly. ‘EDWARD! What about the others?’
The boy looked at him. ‘Dead,’ he replied. ‘Al dead.’
‘Oh God, look!’ gasped Laura.
She was pointing across the clearing. Where a mere second ago he’d seen only jungle, now he saw a line of the creatures approaching them cautiously, spreading out like beaters for a hunting party. He quickly estimated thirty, maybe forty, of them; al sizes.
The whole pack … Jay-zus!
In the middle of the line, he thought he recognized one of them in particular. The one he’d seen in the jungle, barking orders to the others, their leader.
‘Liam,’ said Becks, stepping back from the windmil to join him and the others near the smoking re, now beginning to take hold and crackle and spark. ‘Do you see beginning to take hold and crackle and spark. ‘Do you see the middle one?’
He knew what she was referring to. The one in the middle, the pack leader, was holding one of their spears in its claws. He nodded.
‘Like my adaptive AI,’ she continued, ‘the species has observed our behaviour and learned from it.’
He swal owed nervously. ‘Back to the palisade … we need to go now!’
‘Negative, I must stay.’
‘What?’ He looked at her.
‘This location has been probed in the last twenty-four hours.’ She nodded towards their broken windmil . ‘There are decaying particles in the vicinity of the interference device. They may scan again at any moment.’
She was right, of course. Ut erly barking mad, but quite right.
‘Al right, al right,’ he ut ered, watching the approaching hominids closing the gap slowly. ‘You four,’
he said to the others, ‘get inside the wal and wait there!’
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Edward.
He real y had no idea just then … some notion of holding out beside the camp re, back to back with Becks until … until … what?
Until they’ve nal y worn her down, and jump her. Then turn on me.
But, there was a slight chance, wasn’t there? A slight chance Maddy and Sal were going to sweep this place again at any moment. And, if they did, this might be their again at any moment. And, if they did, this might be their last chance to ag the signal, to tel them they were right here. The alternative, hiding inside their imsy palisade until these creatures nal y managed to gnaw their way through the twine, pul aside a couple of the logs from the wal and get in … He shuddered.
‘There’s a return window coming,’ he said. ‘It’s coming soon! Becks and me need to be out here waiting for it. You four wil be safer inside. I’l cal for you when it opens. Now just go!’
‘I want to stay,’ said Edward, picking up one of their hatchets from a pile of cut wood beside the re. The other three nodded. ‘We’l f-ght them t-together,’ whispered Laura, her teeth chat ering noisily.
Jasmine looked across at the palisade, twenty yards away beyond the ickering pool of light from the re.
‘They’l nd a way in anyway.’
Liam looked at the creatures, now almost entirely encircling them, maintaining their cautious distance. ‘Al right. Perhaps you’re right,’ he ut ered. ‘Becks, how’re we gonna do this?’
‘Recommendation: I need to be in the vicinity of the interference device in order to detect any precursor particles arriving.’
Liam nodded. ‘Yes … yes. R-right. We should hold the ground over there.’ He reached down towards the re and pul ed out a branch. The end of it ickered with ames.
‘Everyone grab a torch. They don’t like re!’
The others fol owed suit. Then moved together in a The others fol owed suit. Then moved together in a tight huddle, away from the reassuring glow of the camp re towards their contraption, a dozen yards beyond the growing pal of amber relight.
The creatures fol owed them, silently padding across the soft ground, watching them, and ever so subtly closing the distance around them.
‘YOU BACK OFF!’ screamed Laura at them, waving her aming stick.
The creatures hissed, warbled and mewed at that, one of the smal er ones at empting a copy of her shaking voice.
‘… Yoo …. bak … o f …’
Becks turned to Liam. ‘This location has just been scanned again. There are several hundred new particles.’
Liam felt a surge of hope. ‘Oh, c’mon! Why don’t they just get on with it and open a bleedin’ window?’
Becks cocked her head. She had no answer.
Al of a sudden, the creature holding the spear barked in a croaky voice and, as one, the creatures surged forward towards them.
‘Oh my God! Oh my God! screamed Laura.
‘Recommendation: use your spears to –’
CHAPTER 69
2001, New York
The best part of an hour passed in silence with Maddy, Sal and Cartwright gathered around the monitors watching a progress bar slowly inch across one of the screens, and an empty directory slowly l with low-resolution JPG les. Forby meanwhile stood beside the doorway, cranked up a couple of feet, gazing at the jungle world outside.
‘They’re stil hunting those beach pigs or whatever those things are,’ he cal ed out softly.
‘Good,’ replied Cartwright absently. ‘How much longer?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘You can see the progress bar yourself, can’t you? It’s nearly there.’
The old man made a face. ‘If it’s anything like the Windows I got at home, nearly there can mean another ve minutes or another ve hours.’
‘This is an operating system from sometime in the 2050s,’ said Maddy. ‘It sure ain’t gonna be Windows.’
The progress bar suddenly lurched forward to a hundred per cent and Bob’s dialogue box appeared.
> Process complete.
‘Bob, can you do some sort of slideshow?’
> A rmative. Images are taken one every ve minutes. A monitor to the left of them ickered to life, revealing A monitor to the left of them ickered to life, revealing a smal pixelated image of green and blue.
Maddy squinted at the image. ‘What is that?’
‘Jungle,’ said Sal. ‘That’s what it is. Jungle and some sky.’Forby joined them around the desk. ‘Yeah … that’s a jungle, I think.’
A second image appeared, almost identical to the rst, a couple of pixel blocks had changed tone slightly. ‘Is this as clear as the images get?’ asked Cartwright.
> A rmative. The pinhole and image data size has been kept to a minimum to conserve on energy consumption.
‘Al we need is to see enough pixels change to indicate something moving around the area, right?’ said Sal.
> Correct, Sal.
‘Can you play through these slides a lit le faster, please, Bob?’
> A rmative, Maddy. Increasing display rate times ten. The next slide came up, just the same as the last, and another, an undecipherable icker show of green and blue pixels. They watched in silence until approximately midway through the complexion of the image suddenly changed with a mass of dark pixels.
‘Whoa! Stop!’ said Maddy. She studied the shape onscreen. ‘What’s that?’
‘That looks like a person,’ said Forby. ‘See? That’s a shoulder and an arm.’
Sal cocked her head and frowned. ‘It doesn’t look right.’
Sal cocked her head and frowned. ‘It doesn’t look right.’
‘What time in their day is this image, Bob?’
> 14:35.
‘Half past two in the afternoon,’ said Sal.
‘Give us the next image, Bob.’
Another dark image appeared on-screen, the blue pixels of sky and green of jungle almost entirely gone.
‘Somebody standing right in the middle of the portal location … for about ve minutes,’ mumbled Maddy to herself. She looked at Sal. ‘That’s got to be the support unit? She’s sensed a tachyon particle and she’s hanging around for another?’
Sal shook her head. ‘Maybe … but the shape of the body looks al kind of funny to me.’
‘Oh, come on, it’s a one hundred by one hundred pixel image – everything’s going to look al funny.’
She shook her head again. ‘I’m not sure. It could be anything … it could be some animal.’
‘Bob, next image.’
Another image ickered up and this time the dark mass of pixels was gone, leaving the image the same even mix of blue and green squares.
Maddy grabbed a pen from the desk and scribbled the time of 14:35 on a scrap of paper. ‘Wel , OK, we know someone was hanging around then. We’ve got one possible window. Let’s get on with the slideshow and see what else we get.’
Once more the images began to icker on-screen one after another, a second apart, the blue pixels of the sky after another, a second apart, the blue pixels of the sky slowly changing hue from bright blue to a rose colour.
‘It’s evening,’ said Cartwright helpful y.
The sequence continued, with the sky pixels slowly reddening in colour, and the jungle’s light green becoming a deeper darker green, until al of a sudden, in the middle of the image, they saw a single dot of bright orange.
‘Stop!’
Al four of them craned forward to get a bet er look.
‘That’s re, isn’t it?’ said Forby. ‘A ame?’
Sal nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘Someone starting a camp re maybe?’
‘Fire … right,’ ut ered Cartwright, ‘and the only thing that can make a re back then is going to be human.’
Maddy tapped her chin thoughtful y. ‘Yup … so maybe this is a more reliable candidate than the other. What time is this image, Bob?’
> 18:15.
‘Give me the next image.’
The orange pixel became a dozen pixels, and half the screen was l ed by a vertical block of black pixels. In the top left corner, they could just make out the sky, the pink evening becoming a deep purple with the onset of dusk.
‘Someone’s standing right there again!’
‘And that thing doesn’t look as weird as the earlier one,’
said Sal.
Maddy looked at her. ‘How can you tel ?’
‘Screw up your eyes a bit, Maddy … it sort of blurs the pixels slightly. You can make out shapes more easily.’
pixels slightly. You can make out shapes more easily.’
‘A camp re and someone standing right there,’ said Cartwright. ‘Looks like the best time so far.’
‘Yes,’ she replied absently. ‘What do you think, Bob?’
> This image looks most probable.
‘Quickly run through the rest.’
The slideshow ickered through the last sixty-eight images, one image per second. A juddering animation of time … the re slowly dwindling, dying and vanishing, the sky darkening until the nal few dozen images were simply a sequence of black pixels.
> Sequence complete.
‘Looks like we have a winner,’ said Cartwright. ‘Can we now proceed?’ He looked up at Forby. ‘You know? Before those hunters come knocking on our door?’
‘OK … let’s begin powering up, Bob.’
> A rmative.
Cartwright stood up straight, his arms caressing a sti back. ‘So … what happens next?’ He glanced at the large perspex tube. ‘They’re going to appear inside that?’
She shook her head and pointed to a circle of chalk scrawled across the concrete oor. ‘There. You and Forby need to stand wel clear of that.’
Cartwright’s man stepped away from the table and faced the circle, unslinging his assualt ri e in readiness. Maddy turned to regard both men. ‘I’d be happier if Mr Forby could take his nger o the trigger.’
Cartwright smiled. ‘Of course.’ He nodded at his man.
‘You can stand down, Forby. But … just stay alert, al
‘You can stand down, Forby. But … just stay alert, al right?’
Forby nodded, slackening his grip and lowering the barrel of his gun.
CHAPTER 70
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Liam lashed out with his hatchet, swinging the serrated metal blade in one hand and probing and prodding with his bamboo spear in the other. But the creatures dodged back with graceful agility, keeping their eyes on the weapons.
The re nearby had taken a rm hold of the branches that had been thrown on top of it. Occasional tongues of ame lashed up into the almost dark sky, and upward cascades of sparks danced like re ies. The ickering light, the warmth from the camp re and the dancing ames on the ends of their torches were causing the hominids’ probing at ack to falter.
‘GO AWAY!’ screamed Laura, prodding the aming end of her branch towards the nearest of them.
Becks, meanwhile, had managed to kil one of them and severely wound another. She could move forward with the same sudden speed as these things, catching them o balance. The wounded creature, now thrashing around on the ground, had lost a limb to one vicious roundhouse sweep of her hatchet. The creature she’d managed to grasp hold of moments ago had had its fragile spine snapped over her knee.
over her knee.
For her e orts she’d received a deep gash down one thigh. Her left leg was red with her own blood, soaking the sock rol ed over the edge of her combat boot almost black. The wound was already clot ing, but Liam couldn’t help notice how much blood she’d lost in that one sudden crimson gush and worried whether her engineered body was capable of replacing that blood with the same e ciency as it could staunch a wound.
The creatures probed and circled, clacking teeth and claws and mewling like foxes, occasional y testing them with a lunge and snap of jaws … so far the six of them were doing bet er than Liam could have hoped holding them back. But then he realized there was patient thinking going on behind what these creatures were up to. Wearing us down. That’s al they’re doing. Wearing us down.
His eyes picked through the lean olive-coloured hides, the ickering chitinous teeth, until he found the pack leader, holding that spear and looking strangely human because of that.
If we got him …
Yes, if Becks could somehow be fast enough to reach out past the others and grab him, and snap his neck in her hands, then the others would surely panic and run. He had a spear in his hand; he realized he could at least have a go. The pack leader was only fourteen or fteen feet away and, unlike the others, circling in that strange bobbing way, he stood perfectly stil , watching them with keen way, he stood perfectly stil , watching them with keen studious eyes.
Liam dropped his hatchet at his feet.
‘What are you doing?’ yel ed Jasmine.
‘Gonna get that one there,’ he said, nodding towards Broken Claw.
He steadied his balance on his back leg, lined up the creature staring at him with cocked-head curiosity down the length of the bamboo shaft and then hurled it like a javelin. A straight point-to-point throw instead of an arced trajectory. He surprised even himself with his accuracy and would probably have caught the thing square in its narrow chest, had not another smal er one bobbed in the way unintentional y. The sharp tip of the bamboo punched into its long bony skul and the creature crumpled to the ground with a short brit le scream that sounded almost like the wail of a human child.
Liam winced and cursed that he’d not got the leader. And now they were down to one spear.
Out of the black one of the smal er hominids suddenly ducked down low and swiped with a claw, knocking Akira o balance. Her leg buckled and, with a thin yelp, she dropped heavily into the dirt. Winded and worn out, she struggled to get up. Yet more spindle-thin arms emerged from the gloom and clawed digits wrapped tightly round her ankles and wrists.
‘No!’ she screamed, her pale face just two wide eyes and her mouth an ‘O’ of horror. Within a second, two beats of a pounding heart, they’d dragged her struggling form out a pounding heart, they’d dragged her struggling form out of the pal of ickering light, her screaming voice smothered, mu ed and then brutal y silenced. Becks took advantage of a careless incursion and lunged forward again, sweeping her blade and missing as the creatures leaped once more back out of her range.
‘We … can’t keep this … up,’ said Laura. ‘Not al … not al n-night.’
‘I know,’ replied Liam.
Just then something whistled past his cheek. ‘Whuh?’
He looked down and saw the shaft of a bamboo spear rat ling and exing on the ground. He looked up at the empty-handed pack leader and understood.
‘Oh no!’ he gasped. ‘You see that? It … threw … It threw it back.’
Good going, Liam. You just taught them how to toss a javelin.
‘Ah Jay-zus … if they start throwin’ missiles at us, we’l be in trouble.’
‘L-like we’re not already?’ mut ered Laura, lashing out at one of the smal er creatures bobbing too close. Liam watched the leader, moving around the rear of his pack, those yel ow eyes no longer on him but it ing across the ground, looking for something.
Looking for another spear to throw?
‘Information.’ Becks’s voice suddenly cut across the clacking and mewling. ‘I am detecting a burst of precursor particles.’
‘Is … is that good?’ asked Jasmine.
‘Is … is that good?’ asked Jasmine.
Liam nodded. ‘Yes! Oh Jay-zus, yes!’ He turned to Becks.
‘That’s a window, right? Tel me it’s a window and not another probe?’
‘A rmative. The con guration suggests an imminent window.’
‘YES! Oh yes!’ He grinned breathlessly.
‘We must move out of this space,’ said Becks. ‘They wil not open the window until it is completely clear.’
‘Right. Together,’ said Liam. ‘Keep together, back to back … move towards the re!’
The ve of them backed up towards each other, until they were almost bumping together. Then Becks stepped a lit le ahead, swiping and spinning a hatchet in each hand with bal et-like precision at the creatures. They wisely backed away from her, creating a path for them to shu e along in her wake.
‘Enough!’ barked Becks after they’d moved half a dozen yards across the clearing towards the increasing heat and ickering light of the camp re. She turned round to face them. ‘The extraction area is now unobstruct–’
It was then a sharpened tip of bamboo erupted through her abdomen, ripping through her esh and the tat ered material of her black crop top. Becks glanced casual y down at the bloody tip.
‘Becks!’ gasped Liam.
With a blur of movement, she reached round and grabbed the creature that had skewered her from behind. She ipped it over her shoulder on to the ground in front She ipped it over her shoulder on to the ground in front of her. Its claws viciously ailed at her, shredding the skin on her forearm into tat y red ribbons. With a savage jerk she twisted its long head. The creature’s yel ow eyes and leathery black tongue bulged under the sudden tension in its slender neck. They heard a crackling sound and then the thing stopped squirming.
‘Becks! You OK?’ cried Liam.
‘Negative. The damage is signi cant,’ she replied, looking down at the point of the spear, stil protruding from her waist. One of her legs wobbled beneath her and she dropped to her knees.
‘BECKS! Hang in there!’ yel ed Liam.
Then they al felt it, the solid push of displaced air. Liam looked behind him and saw a shimmering sphere: the faint, dancing pat ern of a reassuringly familiar place –
the archway. ‘LOOK! That’s it! THAT’S THE WINDOW!’
Right now, in this instant, there were no creatures between them and their way home. ‘GO!’ Liam yel ed. For a moment the two remaining girls and Edward stared at him, unsure what he meant by that.
‘NOW!’ he screamed, his voice breaking. ‘THERE! …
RUN FOR IT! GO, GO, GO!’
Laura nodded, more than happy to obey. She turned on her heels and sprinted for the window. Jasmine fol owed suit. Edward lingered. ‘What about –?’
‘NOW!’ screamed Liam.
Edward turned and sprinted after the girls. Liam turned to Becks. ‘Come on!’
to Becks. ‘Come on!’
She struggled to her feet unsteadily. ‘Information: I have lost signi cant levels of blood –’
‘Just shuddup!’ he snapped, sliding his hands under her armpits and hefting her up. She staggered to her feet.
‘Leave, Liam!’ she ordered him. ‘Protect Edward Chan!’
Liam shot a glance over his shoulder. He could see Laura hovering just outside the spherical boundary of the window, hesitating to step in. Between her and them, Edward and Jasmine sprinting.
‘GODDAMMIT GO THROUGH!’ he shouted. ‘GO THR–… AGHHhhhh!’
He suddenly felt a searing pain through his leg and saw that one of the smal er creatures had grasped his shin; the razor-sharp edge of its claws sliced through his shorts, through his skin and now grated against his shin bone. Becks swiped with the hatchet stil in her left hand, and cut through the creature’s thin wrist. Its claws and its hand were stil at ached to Liam’s lower leg like the jaws of some tenacious decapitated soldier ant. Despite the grating agony in his leg, he dragged Becks with him, she barely able to drunkenly stagger, and yet stil swinging her blade in powerful y vicious yet groggy il -aimed arcs that thwacked and cracked against the hungrily grasping reach of those creatures determined enough to reach out for them.
Around him, Liam could hear a mixture of frustrated snarls and startled whimpers … and a sudden high-pitched scream that sounded unmistakably human. His mind solely scream that sounded unmistakably human. His mind solely on dragging Becks, heavy despite her slight frame, he could only eetingly hope that it wasn’t Edward Chan’s voice he’d just heard.
‘Mission priority –’ Becks began to chastise him.
‘JUST KEEP HITTING THE BLOODY THINGS!’ he
bel owed back at her. She shut up and obliged, swinging a booted foot out at a long bony jaw get ing ready to snap down on her blood-caked thigh. Her boot made heavy contact, and the skul spun on its turtle neck like a skit le, a handful of toothpick-sized teeth whizzing out into the dark.
Ten seconds later – ten seconds that to Liam could easily have been a minute or an hour, ten seconds of dragging, hacking, swinging, kicking and screaming – and al of a sudden he felt the hair on his head lift in response to the warm soup of energy and excited particles around him. Over his shoulder, he could see Sal, actual y see her shape, dancing and undulating as if seen through a thin veil of oil, and other shapes, Edward, Laura standing beside her. He could see the ickering blue zzing archway light that normal y irritated him so much as he read on his bunk.
‘WE DID IT!’ he found himself yel ing as his foot seemed to lose touch with solid ground and he felt that al too familiar nauseating sensation of fal ing.
CHAPTER 71
2001, New York
He felt his face smack against a hard concrete oor, the dead weight of Becks landing heavily on the top of his back, knocking the air out of his lungs.
‘Good God!’ he heard from somewhere nearby – a male voice he didn’t recognize.
While his eyes were stil seeing stars, he could feel Becks struggling to lift herself o his back. He heard the pounding rasp of laboured breath nearby, presumably, hopeful y, Edward and the other two. He could hear the faint muted chug of the generator in the back room. And through the stil -open portal hovering a couple of feet above the tangled pile of himself and Becks, the far-o sounds of a jungle night stirring to life … and the clickclacking and mewling of those things get ing louder, closer.
‘Ummpph … closhhhh the ’ortal!’ he mumbled into the oor, his bloodied lips stil mushed against the hard concrete as Becks struggled to lift her dead weight o him.
‘Liam? Is that you under there?’ Maddy’s voice.
‘Umpph. U’mm … yeshhh,’ he mumbled. ‘Closhhh the
’leedin’ ’ortal!’
Then al of a sudden he felt another heavy load land on Then al of a sudden he felt another heavy load land on his back, and the excruciating pain of three sharp blades digging deep into his left shoulder-blade.
‘What on earth is THAT?’ Another unfamiliar voice, another man’s voice.
The weight was gone as quickly as it had arrived and he heard the skit ering of claws across the concrete oor and the startled bark of one or two of those creatures echoing o the arched brick ceiling.
‘My God, Forby! Shoot it! SHOOT IT!’
The piercing scream of a girl, he couldn’t be sure who. Then, with a rat ling sigh, Becks nal y opped o the side of his back, her pale face spat ered with dark dots of drying blood, thudding to the oor beside his. Her grey eyes stared lifelessly back at him, as if looking at something far, far away. He managed to lift himself up on to his elbows, grimacing at the sharp pain in his shoulder and his head stil spinning from the impact of the heavy landing. He at empted to get his rst glance at what was going on around him.
Two of the creatures had managed to fol ow them through and were now darting in confusion and panic one way and then the other across the archway oor. He spot ed two men he didn’t recognize: one old, in a rumpled suit with a loosened tie dangling round his throat like a hangman’s noose. The other man was younger with buzz-cut sandy hair and an army-t physique beneath what looked like a baggy light-green boiler suit. He raised a gun.
‘Where did they go?’ snapped Maddy.
‘Where did they go?’ snapped Maddy.
They heard something fal o a shelf in a dark corner of the archway and rol noisily across the oor.
‘Over there!’
With trained, quick precision, Forby squinted down the weapon’s barrel and ipped the night-sight of his scope on. A soft green glow poured across his face as he slowly panned the weapon around the archway, then up towards the curved brick ceiling.
‘Ahh … I see one.’
Liam fol owed the direction of his gaze and thought he could just about make out some dark shape moving among a criss-cross of old rusting pipes and loops of electrical ex. Age-old dust and the grit from crumbling bricks and mortar trickled down past the softly zzing glow of the ceiling light, giving the hapless creature’s position away. The man red two aimed shots in quick succession. The creature screamed, then plummeted to the oor, bringing down a smal urry of dust and grit with it. It squirmed and screamed and drummed arms and legs against the oor, until the young man put a third shot into its long skul .
As the echo of the last shot rat led around the brick wal s, Liam looked around him. He could see Edward and Laura huddled together by the displacement machine’s perspex tube, and Sal and Maddy beside the computer desk. Al of them looking from one dark recess to another, listening intently for the sounds of movement.
‘Where’s the other one?’ whispered Sal.
‘Where’s the other one?’ whispered Sal.
The man with the gun placed a nger to his lips to hush her. ‘Hiding,’ he whispered.
‘Wel , for Christ’s sake nd him, Forby!’ hissed the older man.
Liam watched as Forby stepped across the oor into the middle of the archway, continuing to slowly pan his gun, studying every nook and cranny around until nal y he came to a halt, aiming at the arched recess where their bunk beds were.
‘Uh-huh … I think he’s skulking under there.’
He squat ed down low and pumped his nger. A single shot danced and ricocheted under Liam’s cot, sparking against the metal frame.
It was then that something dropped down from above, past the ceiling light on to Forby’s back – a blur of movement and ashing of claws and teeth, a bright arc of crimson.
‘HEELLP M–!’ His voice was cut o as the creature’s claws ailed at his neck. He dropped the gun as he staggered and struggled to wrestle the thing o his back. Liam picked himself up and scrambled across the oor, reaching out for the heavy assault ri e as Forby’s legs buckled and he dropped to his knees, blood spraying from the multiple ragged wounds across his face and head. The creature leaped o his shoulders and darted towards the shut er door as Forby opped the rest of the way to the ground. Quite dead.
Liam raised the gun and pul ed the trigger. The gun Liam raised the gun and pul ed the trigger. The gun kicked his shoulder as he emptied the clip with a protracted and unaimed vol ey that produced a dozen showers of sparks and brick-red plumes of dust. With the gun angrily clicking in his hands, he nal y eased his nger o the trigger and peered through the gunsmoke at the inert body of the other creature. Now a shredded mess.
‘Jesus,’ whispered the old man, his croaky voice shaking.
CHAPTER 72
2001, New York
They stared at the naked body oating amid the pink-red soup of liquid in the plastic cylinder.
‘Wil the support unit survive?’ asked Sal.
‘Becks,’ said Liam quietly. His voice lit le more than a gentle croak. ‘Her name is Becks.’
The soft glow of red light coming from the base of the birthing tube was the only il umination in the back room. It was enough for Maddy to see the lost expression of posttraumatic stress on Liam’s face. ‘She’l live,’ said Maddy with the hesitant smile of someone not real y sure. ‘Bob said their combat frames can sustain roughly a seventy-ve per cent blood loss and stil be able to recover from that, given enough time.’ She glanced at the shredded remnants of the female unit’s left lower arm. Almost al the soft tissue had been clawed away leaving a skeletal forearm surrounded by tat ers of skin and tendon that oated and swayed in the gloop like so many ends of frayed rope.
‘Unlike Forby,’ said Cartwright sombrely.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Maddy. ‘He seemed, like, you know …
like a good guy.’
The old man nodded thoughtful y. ‘The best. The very best.’ He sighed. ‘Family man too.’
best.’ He sighed. ‘Family man too.’
The only sound in the back room was the gentle purring of the tube’s ltration system. Maddy had shut down the generator to conserve the half a tank of fuel they had left. There was no need for the generator to be chugging away right now; a row of steady green LEDs showed the displacement machinery was ful y charged and ready to use again. She’d shut everything else down, the computer systems, the lights, the other birthing tubes and the fridge containing the other embryos … they’d keep in their cryotubes for a few more hours without refrigeration.
‘So how long?’ asked Laura, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. ‘You know? Until she’s al bet er again?’
Maddy looked up at the girl. She could imagine her in another time, con dent and popular in her high school, a baton-twiddling cheerleader, everyone’s favourite, always invited to parties, always surrounded by friends and acolytes. That Texan accent – the con dent bray of someone who’d never need to question her place in the world … Wel , she didn’t look quite so much like a future Homecoming Queen now. Even in this muted light Maddy could see how badly a ected she was by the portal’s corrosion e ect. Her face looked ghostly pale, the esh around her eyes dark and it seemed her nose was stil leaking a steady trickle of blood: a ruptured blood vessel somewhere inside that quite possibly might never heal. The boy, Edward Chan, seemed to have fared only slightly bet er.
Apparently, according to Chan, there’d been another girl Apparently, according to Chan, there’d been another girl with them, but she’d been jumped by one of those things just before she could reach the portal. If she’d su ered the same fate as Forby, then Maddy could only hope her death had been as merciful y quick. Although, after what she’d witnessed only half an hour ago, merciful felt entirely like the wrong word to use. She watched Chan’s large round eyes staring at the mush of organic soup, at the foggy gure of the support unit inside. Both these two, Chan and the girl, seemed to be in a deep state of shock, wel beyond grieving for a lost classmate. Liam said there’d been others, sixteen of them had survived the blast back in time. Only these two plus Liam and Becks had made it. God knows what they’ve been through.
‘How long?’ asked Chan again.
‘About four and a half hours,’ Maddy replied. ‘Four and a half hours and her condition should be stable. She’l have replenished enough blood to function again.’
‘What about her arm?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘I don’t know whether this healing thing actual y regrows limbs and stu . Bob, our computer system, just told me she’d be able to repopulate blood cel s. We’l see, I guess.’
Liam’s eyes came back from far away and met hers.
‘You said … function again?’
She nodded. ‘She has to go back, Liam. You know that. There are loose ends that need xing.’
The others looked at her. It was clear to her that she was the only one doing any strategic thinking here, was the only one doing any strategic thinking here, thinking beyond the moment.
That’s your job, Maddy. Team strategist … remember?
‘She has to go back and correct what happened … what it is that’s made the present the way it is.’
‘It’s those creatures, isn’t it?’ said Cartwright. ‘The ones that came through your portal … they’re the thing that’s di erent?’
Maddy turned to Liam. ‘Liam, is that –?’
Oh my God.
She hadn’t noticed it before. In fact, she had, but she’d thought it was a streak of dust, or perhaps a dusting of some exotic jungle pol en. Looking at Liam right now, even in the dim crimson glow of the birthing tube, she could see a shock of white hair on his left temple. And his left eye … the white of it mot led with the web-like blur of a burst blood vessel.
‘Yes …’ he said after a few moments, not registering the look on her face. ‘Yes … those things, they learned a few tricks from us.’
‘There’s more?’ asked Sal.
He nodded. ‘Yeah … thirty or forty, I suppose. A pack of them.’ His eyes remained on the outline of Becks’s form, curled up like a foetus. In her sleep, vulnerable-looking –
just a teenage girl. ‘She managed to kil some of them, but the rest are back there.’
Maddy looked at Sal and Cartwright. ‘Then those hunters across the river, they must be distant ancestors. They’re somehow linked, right? The long heads?’
They’re somehow linked, right? The long heads?’
Cartwright nodded. ‘It’s an unusual con guration.’ He stroked his chin. ‘No … it’s a unique con guration.’
Maddy had lifted the shut er door brie y after they’d seen to Becks and shown Liam and the other two the jungle that now replaced New York. The hunters were no longer probing the riverbank for mud creatures and had returned to the set lement on the far side of the broad river.
‘They’re descendants, Liam,’ she said. ‘Distant … very distant descendants.’
‘And their ancestors,’ cut in Cartwright, ‘must have learned something from you … something that enabled them to survive and prosper. Something, some sort of skil , that helped them survive the K–T event, whatever wiped out the dinosaurs.’
Liam nodded slowly. She could see he’d worked that much out already. ‘So … someone has to go back and kil the whole pack.’
‘Yes,’ said Maddy, reaching a hand out and holding his arm gently. ‘They can’t be al owed to live and develop any sort of intel igence that could save them. They should have died out with al the other dinosaurs.’
‘OK.’ He took a deep breath. ‘OK … I’l go –’
‘No,’ she said, a lit le too quickly. She tried not to let her stare at his bloodshot eye linger. ‘Not you, Liam. You need rest.’
‘If not me, then who? No one else –’
‘The support unit.’
‘The support unit.’
‘Becks?’ He shook his head. ‘No. She’l take days to recover, surely. And she’l not be able to face them al on her own. They’l kil her, to be sure.’
Her? She?
She held his arm. ‘Listen to me, Liam.’ She nodded at the birthing tube. ‘I know you’ve been through a lot together, but remember … it’s just a support unit in there. A meat robot. A tool for the job. That’s al it is. It’s expendable.’
‘I’l go with her,’ he said.
‘No.’ Maddy shook her head rmly. ‘No. You can’t go back there again.’
‘Why?’
He doesn’t know, does he? He hasn’t looked into a mirror. He hasn’t realized how much damage going so far back in time has already done to him. She wondered why he hadn’t yet noted the condition of the girl and Chan. Both looked like people su ering from advanced radiation sickness. But then … from his time, Liam wouldn’t know anything about radiation sickness. Perhaps he at ributed the bleeding noses, the pal id complexion to shock. Perhaps he was too much in shock himself to have noticed.
‘Because you’re too valuable to lose, Liam. We need you here.’
‘We need you,’ added Sal, ‘and …’ Her face dipped out of range of the soft peach glow and in the darkness they heard movement, a scrape, the heavy thud of something metal ic and the rat le and tinkle of a buckle. Her face metal ic and the rat le and tinkle of a buckle. Her face returned and she held up something that glinted in the dul light. ‘And she’d have this gun, Liam. Not just a bamboo stick.’
Maddy nodded. ‘You saw how good it was earlier.’
‘High-calibre MP15 assault ri e,’ said Cartwright. ‘It’l mince those monsters up no problem.’
‘We’l give her a few hours to rebuild herself. OK?’
‘I’l uhh … I’l go and see how many clips of ammo Forby has … had,’ said Cartwright.
Maddy pressed out a smile, and nodded. ‘You do that.’
She turned back to Liam, watching the oating body of Becks. She could see he felt something for the support unit, that they’d bonded in the past … that this time, unlike last time, if the support unit fel , there’d be no one to retrieve its AI, no one to dig the computer out of its cranium and bring it back.
Be the leader, Maddy. There’s no discussion here. It’s decided.
‘Sorry, Liam, she has to go,’ she said forceful y. ‘That’s how it is. She has to do this. We need New York back; we need our power feed back before we run out of fuel. Anyway …’ She glanced at the silhouet e of Cartwright shu ing cautiously out through the doorway by the light of a wind-up torch. She lowered her voice. ‘Anyway, there’s going to be one more job for you to do before we’ve dug ourselves out of this whole freakin’ hole.’
CHAPTER 73
2001, New York
Liam watched the sun set ing across the river, picking out thin skeins of smoke from the set lement perched on the muddy banks on the far side. He saw several pinpricks of light in the middle of the round huts.
Fire. One of the earliest markers of intel igence. He wondered how many aeons ago this descendant species had learned they could control it, use it. A far cry from the primitive animal fear for it demonstrated by their ancestors.
He heard the shut er rat le as Maddy stooped under it and joined him outside. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Tired.’ Squat ing against the outside brick wal of their archway, watching the jungle turn dark and the sky’s rich palet e change from crimson to violet, he realized how ut erly spent he felt. Final y, after two weeks of nervous tension, two weeks of fearing something primal, savage and hungry could snatch him away at any time … here he was, somewhere safe at last. Somewhere he could close his eyes for a moment and actual y, properly, rest.
‘She’s nearly ready,’ said Maddy. ‘We’re prepping the portal to take her back to one minute after we closed the portal to take her back to one minute after we closed the last one. Those creatures should stil al be gathered there, scratching their heads and wondering where you went.’
‘How is she?’
‘The arm looks like it’s begun repairing itself. I noticed there’s some new muscle tissue. No skin yet. I presume that regrows at some point. Anyway, Sal’s bound her arm and hand in bandages to protect it.’
‘How is she?’ he asked again. ‘Can she do it?’
‘She says she can operate to forty-seven per cent functional capacity.’ Maddy smirked. ‘And she’s real y rather pleased about the weapon.’
Liam laughed softly. ‘Just like Bob.’
‘They could be brother and sister.’
‘Wel , they are … I suppose.’
‘True.’
Liam nodded towards the vil age. ‘It feels wrong, in a way.’
‘What?’
‘What we’re doing … kil ing the rest of that pack. I mean, look what they became.’ He shook his head and laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘I’m almost proud of them, so I am. They’re like, I suppose … I feel like they’re sort of my creation. We showed them how to build a bridge, how to use a spear. And, after Lord knows how many thousands of years …’
‘Mil ions actual y.’
‘… mil ions of years, they’ve become this. A brand-new
‘… mil ions of years, they’ve become this. A brand-new intel igent race and here we are, going to wipe them al out. What’s that word for it?’
‘Genocide?’
‘Aye, that’s it … like that Hitler tried to do to the Jews. And we’re going to do it to those things. They’re not just dumb animals, Maddy. They were clever back in the jungle, you could see that. Very clever, and now here they are just as smart as us humans.’
‘No, Liam, they’re not. Something that old man, Cartwright, said …’
‘What?’
‘Ask yourself this: just how long have they been at this stage of development? Hmm? They could have got this far
– canoes, spear, huts an’ al – mil ions of years ago and yet
… and yet this is as far as they ever got.’ She gazed at the distant vil age. ‘Otherwise, why aren’t they walking around in smart suits and talking on cel phones?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe they did once. Maybe mil ions of years ago they were that smart, and this place was a big city like New York.’
‘And what? They chose to become savages again?’
‘Who knows? Maybe they had some sort of war? Maybe they once had an incredible civilization that eventual y col apsed into ruins. Or some doomsday weapon wiped them out but for a few poor bloody survivors.’
Maddy nodded. ‘It’s possible, I guess. A lot can happen in sixty-ve mil ion years.’
‘Aye, and who’s to say it doesn’t one day happen to us
‘Aye, and who’s to say it doesn’t one day happen to us too, eh? And soon.’
She looked at him. ‘Kramer’s time?’
‘Foster’s time, perhaps. You remember the things he told us about the future? The dark times ahead. Al that global warming, the ooding, pol ution and the poisoned seas … the starving bil ions?’
She did. It was a future she’d thought she was beginning to see in her lifetime. That big meeting in Copenhagen that was supposed to be the last best chance for the world to agree on how to stop global warming – it had failed miserably. She wondered whether historians from midway through the twenty-rst century would point to that day as the very beginning of the end.
‘Wel … that’s the future whether we like it or not, Liam. And it’s our job to ght to keep it that way.’
He nodded. ‘Hmm … but do you ever wonder, Maddy?’
‘Wonder what?’
He looked at her, with his bloodshot eye and thin shock of snow-white hair, and for a moment he looked both old and young at the same time. ‘Do you wonder whether that future, the one Foster told us al about, whether that’s the right future to ght for?’
‘I dunno. I suppose we just have to trust him that it is.’
The sun dipped behind the far horizon of trees, behind the thin lines of camp re smoke. From inside the arch they could hear the voices of the others: Sal helping the support unit … Becks … get ready.
‘She’s been given orders to kil them al , then destroy
‘She’s been given orders to kil them al , then destroy your camp. Burn everything so there’s nothing left behind to leave fossil traces. We’l know if she’s successful –’
Maddy nodded out at the jungle – ‘when this al goes and we get New York back, and …’ She lowered her voice a lit le. ‘And the tricky situation we were stuck right in the middle of just before jungle-land arrived …’
‘Cartwright?’
She nodded.
‘So …’ He cocked a brow. ‘I’m presuming he, and the poor fel a with the gun, are the chaps who found our message?’
‘Not exactly. It was found a lot, lot earlier. In the 1940s, apparently. But Cartwright runs this lit le government agency,’ she snorted, ‘an agency a bit like ours, I guess –
smal and secret. Its job for the last sixty years has been to be a custodian of your message. And to nal y make contact with us in 2001.’
‘And he came knocking?’
‘Oh, he came knocking al right. Just before the last time wave, we had men with guns standing guard outside in the backstreet. In fact, they had several areas of the neighbourhood sealed up with roadblocks and soldiers and stu . Helicopters overhead and everything. Quite a big deal. You’d have loved it.’
‘My fault.’ Liam looked guilty. ‘Sorry about that.’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t be. You had to send the message. There was no other way we would have found you.’
you.’
Sal was cal ing out for her. It was time.
‘Thing is, Liam,’ she said hurriedly, ‘we have to be ready to move, and move quickly. If Becks is successful … we’l get al of that situation right back in our faces. We’l be right where we were. So, I’m going to need to send you back to make sure they don’t get your message.’
‘Dinosaur times?’
‘Oh no. Not that far.’ She managed to stop herself saying because that would probably nish you o . ‘No … it’l be the second of May 1941. You need to prevent some kids from nding a particular chunk of rock.’
He smiled. ‘And Cartwright and his agency wil never have existed?’
She was ducking down under the shut er when she paused. ‘Wel … his agency might not exist, or maybe it wil , but it wil be busy with some other secret it’s trying to keep from the American people.’
‘Right.’
‘When that time wave comes, Liam … we’l need Cartwright standing outside when I turn on our time eld. His life wil be rewrit en along with the rest of the corrected reality. He’l have no memory of al of this.’
Liam bent down and looked under the shut er and into the archway. He could see Forby’s dark boots poking out of the end of the blanket they’d wrapped his body in.
‘And what about him?’
‘Forby? Not sure. If his body is outside the eld I suppose he gets to live again, doing whatever job he was suppose he gets to live again, doing whatever job he was doing before Cartwright and his agency suddenly winked into existence. The point is … whatever that means for him and the old man, we won’t have a backstreet ful of spooks with guns. We’l be back to normal.’ She grinned up at him. ‘Which would real y be quite nice.’
‘True … but do we not stil have to get Edward Chan back home?’
‘One thing at a time,’ she sighed. ‘Come on, let’s send Becks on her way.’
Liam fol owed her under the shut er and then cranked it down after him.
He rejoined Maddy and the others gathered around the computer desk. He saw Becks standing in the middle of them, the assault ri e cradled in her arms, one of them swathed in bandages up to her elbow.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked over the hubbub of other voices: questions from Cartwright and the kids that Maddy was busy trying to eld as she con gured the return time-stamp.
‘I am ne, Liam.’
‘What about that spear wound? That looked pret y bad, so it did. Are you sure you’re t enough to go?’
‘My organic diagnostic systems indicate my kidney was ruptured and is no longer functioning. The organ can be repaired later,’ she added. ‘It wil not a ect my performance.’
‘Your arm?’
‘My arm is operable.’
‘My arm is operable.’
‘OK,’ said Maddy. ‘I’ve set it to one minute after the other window. There’l stil be background tachyon particles around from the previous window, but I’ve moved the location thirty feet away so there shouldn’t be any disruptive e ect on your arrival portal. OK?’
‘A rmative.’
‘You understand the mission parameters?’
‘Kil al the reptile hominids. Destroy al evidence of our camp. Return window set for two hours after arrival.’
Maddy nodded. ‘You got it. And, of course, remember to bring the gun back with you.’
One of Becks’s dark eyebrows arched slowly. ‘Wel …
duh,’ she said atly.
Sal giggled. ‘That’s cool!’
Maddy grinned at Liam. ‘Looks like she’s been doing some learning of her own.’
He nodded.
‘Al right, we haven’t got time to l the tube. She’s going back dry. Stand clear of that circle on the ground.’
She pointed to the circle of chalk, and within it, a patch of concrete oor darker than the rest. She sighed. ‘We’re gonna need to l in the oor once again after al this is nished.’
The others pul ed warily back and Becks wandered over and planted her feet inside the circle, her knees bent, ready to react at a moment’s notice, the gun loaded, cocked and raised, the assault ri e’s but pressed rmly against her shoulder and ready to re.
shoulder and ready to re.
‘Be careful, Becks,’ said Liam. ‘We want you back safely.
’ She nodded hesitantly. ‘A rmative, Liam O’Connor. I wil be careful.’
‘Are we al set?’ asked Maddy.
‘A rmative.’
‘Al right, Bob.’ Maddy turned back to the desk mic. ‘On my countdown. Ten … nine … eight …’
The archway l ed with the sound of power surging into the displacement machine, the green LEDs winking o one after another as they indicated the drain of stored energy. A three-yard-diameter sphere of shimmering air suddenly enveloped Becks. The ceiling uorescent light dimmed and ickered.
‘Seven … six … ve …’
Her cool grey eyes turned to rest on Liam and she smiled uncertainly.
‘Four … three … two …’
‘Good luck,’ he mouthed, unsure whether she could read that in the ickering zzing light.
‘… one …’
And then she was gone. Air whistled past them al to l the sudden vacuum created.
‘Wow,’ whispered Edward.
‘Now we wait,’ said Maddy. She shot a glance at Liam.
‘And we make sure we’re ready.’
CHAPTER 74
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Becks emerged from the surrounding sphere of undulating air, and dropped the last few inches with a soft thud of boots on hard mud.
Crouched, ready for action, her eyes panned across the re-lit clearing: a dancing, ickering impression of hel . The creatures had converged in the centre of the area, picking through the shelters, the palisade, watching the camp re hungrily consuming the last of the branches that had been stacked on it.
A knot of them were gathered around the space where, only a minute ago, the return window had opened. They were examining the ground, a cluster of low ferns nearby, their heads cocked with confusion and bewilderment like curious crows studying road kil .
None of them had yet noticed her standing there. She had a thirty-round ammo clip, and in the blink of an eye had organized the order in which she was going to drop the targets: larger male creatures rst. The rst rapidly red half-dozen shots echoed across the clearing like so many dried and brit le branches snapping, and ve out of six of her targets dropped like leather sacks of bone and meat. The one she’d missed had bobbed of bone and meat. The one she’d missed had bobbed unpredictably, the shot skimming across the top of his head.
The other creatures froze where they were, uncertain as to what the rapid cracks of gun re actual y meant. Becks took advantage of the moment of stil ness and confusion and selected another six targets, al the larger males again. But this time the muzzle ash of her gun had at racted their at ention and they began to bound towards her. She kil ed four and wounded another, before their short-lived charge faltered. They drew up a dozen yards away and fanned out, snapping and snarling.
Beyond them she could see the others, females and cubs being herded away from harm by a large male. She recognized it as the pack’s leader, a claw from one of its four digits missing on its left arm. It was holding one of their spears, waving it around and using it to prod and cajole the pack away into the darkness.
[Assessment: primary target]
The pack leader, the alpha male … logic and
observation dictated that that particular creature was the one who’d been learning from them; the shrewd one, the clever one whose genes and unique acquired knowledge were going to pass onwards to its o spring. In only a few nanoseconds of silicon-based analysis, she realized that the one creature she had to be absolutely certain of kil ing was the one with the missing claw. She was striding forward like an automaton as she red another rapid succession of single shots, kil ing half of the creatures bobbing and single shots, kil ing half of the creatures bobbing and snarling in front of her; those stil standing turned and ed. The noise and the muzzle ash were as startling to them as the sudden inexplicable death it seemed to deal out. The entire pack was in motion now, scat ering like birds startled by a handclap. But her eyes remained on the back of the alpha male. She swung the assault ri e towards it, aimed and red.
The shot spun the creature o its feet.
CHAPTER 75
2001, New York
Maddy looked over at Cartwright. He was with the two children and Sal, standing beside the half-raised shut er entrance, staring out at the jungle and eagerly waiting to see the spectacular sight of a new reality arriving from a distant past. Sal was doing a great job keeping them al over there, tel ing them al about time ripples and waves and her job as an observer.
‘You understand what you’ve got to do?’ she asked Liam quietly.
He nodded. ‘But are you sure it’s the right date?’
‘Wel , I hope so. He said your fossilized message was discovered on that day. I presume he’s not lying. I’ve got the Glen Rose National Park entered in as the location. I’m sure he mentioned a river cal ed the Paluxy River … so that’s what I’ve put in. And you’re looking for the two boys that found it.’
‘Boys? How old?’
‘I don’t know … You know, boys.’ She shrugged. ‘Boy age, I guess.’
Liam glanced furtively over her shoulder at the others.
‘Wel , then, what do they look like?’
She ran her hand tiredly through her frizzy hair. ‘Jeez …
She ran her hand tiredly through her frizzy hair. ‘Jeez …
How the hel am I supposed to know!’ she mut ered irritably, then immediately felt guilty and angry with herself. She looked at Liam … his bloodshot eye, the streak of white hair … and felt like a snappy cow. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sighed. ‘I guess they’l look al excited and very pleased with themselves. OK?’
She turned towards the desk. ‘Bob, are we ready for a portal?’
> A rmative. There is su cient charge for this displacement.
‘OK.’ She nodded. ‘Al right.’ She looked at Liam’s face again, pale like the other two, but not as bad. No nosebleeds, no apparent nausea or any other apparent haemorrhaging. ‘You sure you’re OK to go, Liam?’
He nodded. ‘I’m ne, so I am. Tired, I could sleep for a year, but I’m al right.’
Why not go in his place, Maddy? Look at him … look at the damage that last portal did to him. And now you’re sending him through again! She stil ed that guilty voice in her head quickly; she needed to be right here, coordinating Becks’s and Liam’s bring-backs. It was al going to be rather tricky.
She wanted to tel him what she knew, what Foster had told her. She wanted to tel him so that at least he could decide for himself if it was worth it, kil ing himself slowly, one corruption at a time.
‘Shal we?’ he said.
She pressed a digital watch into his hand. ‘Six hours,’
She pressed a digital watch into his hand. ‘Six hours,’
she said softly, then glanced at the chalk circle and the concrete already gouged out of the oor in the middle. Liam understood. He had six hours back in 1941 and then she’d open the return window. He casual y ambled across the oor towards the circle as Maddy silently initiated the countdown sequence. The machinery began to hum – there was no way to avoid that – and the ceiling light ickered and dimmed.
She was hoping Cartwright would be too engrossed in listening to Sal and watching for the time wave to immediately notice something was going on, but the wily old man spun round and looked back into the arch.
‘What’s going on?’
Liam stepped smartly into the chalk circle just as a sphere of air began to twitch and dget around him.
‘What’s happ–Hang on, what’s …?’ His eyes widened.
‘Where the HELL IS HE GOING?’
Maddy ignored him. Cartwright reached into his jacket pocket.
‘No! Don’t shoot!’ shouted Maddy, realizing what he was going to do. ‘Please!’
Cartwright pul ed out his pistol, straightened his arm and aimed. ‘STOP IT, NOW!’
‘I can’t! Please … I can’t stop it. Don’t sh–’
He red a single shot at Liam just as the sphere wobbled and col apsed in on itself with a pu . 1941, Somervel County, Texas
At the very same moment that Liam landed on a riverbank of pebbles something whistled past his ear and o into the sky.‘Jay-zusss!’ He ducked and then looked around, wondering what the hel that was. He saw nothing, just a narrow river, rol ing sedately along a shal ow creek of sandy-coloured rock, smal and mean-looking yew trees and arid tufts of sun-bleached grass that hissed softly alongside the soothing gurgle of water.
Perhaps a bird? A bee? A y?
It could have been. A fast one, though.
His mind turned to more pressing mat ers – which way to go? He had no idea, no idea at al , other than to look out for a pair of boys. He looked at the digital watch, Maddy’s. She’d set a countdown on it: ve hours and ftynine minutes.
‘Right,’ he mut ered to himself, ‘where do I start?’
A midday sun beat down on his head as he stood there, unsure which way to turn. He decided, before walking anywhere, that he was going to mark the window location with a smal cairn of rocks: a dozen st-sized worn and rounded rocks stacked in a smal pyramid. Big enough so that he wasn’t going to walk right on past and miss it. Then, caught on a lazy midday breeze that had the nearby yew trees stirring and hissing, he heard the faint cal of a voice and what sounded like a splash of water. cal of a voice and what sounded like a splash of water. That way … downstream. He set o , walking along the riverbank, shingle and pebbles clat ering underfoot. For a moment he recal ed an image of that huge sweeping bay and the calm prehistoric green sea spreading out to an in nite horizon on his right.
It was here. Right here, an incredible tropical sea. Quite a breathtaking notion, that … in the vast dimensions of geological time, even seas and oceans, just like any other living creature, had lifespans that came and went.
He heard voices again, echoing up the creek. The sound of children playing, larking about.
CHAPTER 76
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Becks fol owed the spat ers of dark blood into the jungle. By moonlight the streaks of blood were black and glistened wetly. The trail didn’t lead too far into the jungle, fortunately. If it had, she suspected she’d have been unable to fol ow it; the moonlight was beginning to fail her, blocked by the drooping leaves from the canopy trees above.
She heard them before she saw them: the rat ling breath of one snorting like a winded bu alo and a chorus of mewling voices that sounded like a pitiful choir of simpering children. Her eyes picked them out. The creature she’d managed to hit was curled up on the jungle oor. Around it an array of the smal er creatures, females and cubs, al pawed and stroked the wounded one, as if somehow that would magical y heal their pack leader. She stepped forward until she was looking directly down at the creature with the broken claw. The pack, perhaps twenty of them here, became quiet; a forest of yel ow eyes that glowed with soft uorescence and narrowed with fear looked up at her.
‘… Help … me …’ The facsimile of a human voice came from one of the females. Becks recognized it as an came from one of the females. Becks recognized it as an at empt to duplicate the cries of the human cal ed Keisha. A part of her computer mind calmly informed her that a mission parameter remained outstanding, and could not be successful y agged as completed until, at the very least, the wounded creature was con rmed dead.
But another part of her mind, a very much smal er part, a part that contributed thoughts as foggy sensations rather than runtime commands, spoke to her.
Just like me.
She remembered being born, released from growth amid a cascading soup of warm liquid, lying like this creature, curled like a foetus on a hard oor; feeling bewildered, frightened, confused. An animal mind of sensations, feelings … but no words.
She squat ed down to get a closer look at the creature. The wound was in the middle of the creature’s narrow chest, and from the pulsing of ink-black blood down its olive skin, was almost certainly going to prove to be fatal.
‘You wil die,’ she announced coldly. And then realized talking to them was il ogical and pointless – these wild things were no more intel igent than monkeys. But, on the other hand, it felt like another way of processing, ltering her own thoughts … giving words to that part of her mind that wasn’t high-density silicon wafer.
‘I am here to kil you,’ she said. ‘This is a mission requirement.’
The yel ow eyes studied her silently. Perhaps those eyes were trying to communicate something, pleading for were trying to communicate something, pleading for mercy.
She stood up again and changed the clip in the assault ri e for a fresh one. The mission voice had no time for such an irrational sentiment and gently cajoled her to proceed with the task.
Complete Mission
1. Terminate alpha male of species
2. Terminate remaining hominids (optional)
3. Retrieve al evidence of human habitation
‘I am … sorry,’ she said. She cocked her head, curious. There’d been a strange e ect on her voice. It had ut ered ever so slightly. It had actual y made her sound more convincingly human; she’d sounded almost
indistinguishable from the school students she and Liam had spent the last fourteen days in the jungle with. Those three words real y had sounded so very human. For a moment she was almost tempted to say them once again. Instead, she raised the ri e swiftly to her shoulder, her bandaged nger slipped on to the trigger and beneath the dressing the recently vat-grown muscle tissue tightened and pul ed. A shot rang out. Her nger muscles released and pul ed again … and again … and again.
By the time the last of the creatures opped lifelessly across the body of Broken Claw, the clip was empty and the barrel warm.
the barrel warm.
The jungle was stil , every nocturnal species stunned into silence by the rapid crack of gun re. For a few moments she listened to the shifting breeze, the muted rumble of the nearby river.
‘I am … sorry,’ she said again, and realized this time her voice sounded at and emotionless, as it always did. She turned on her heels and headed back towards the remains of their abandoned camp.
2001, New York
‘Where did you send him?’ barked Cartwright, swinging the aim of his gun on to Maddy.
‘I … I j-just sent him back … to help Becks kil the –’
‘You’re lying!’ he snapped.
‘Honestly I –’
He red a shot past her head. Behind her one of the computer monitors exploded amid a shower of sparks and granules of glass.
‘Real y,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t advise lying, young lady. I can put a bul et through your stomach right now … and believe me when I say that’s one of the most painful ways to go. Slow and very, very painful.’ He took a dozen steps towards her. ‘Now, I’l try again … where did you send him?’
Maddy swal owed nervously, her eyes on the gun. ‘I …
just … I …’
just … I …’
‘Maddy!’ yelped Sal. ‘Something’s coming!’
Cartwright stopped where he was. ‘What’s that?’ he shouted back over his shoulder, keeping his eyes rmly on the older girl.
‘Did you feel it? A tremor?’
‘No,’ he replied, his eyes and aim stil on Maddy. ‘I didn’t feel anything.’
‘I felt something,’ said Edward.
‘Oh my God … the jungle’s changed,’ said Laura.
‘Something di erent. I don’t know what. Something –’
Sal nodded. ‘The set lement’s gone. It’s an early ripple
… the big change wil fol ow.’
Cartwright cursed. He desperately wanted to see this.
‘You!’ he snapped at Maddy, waving his gun, ‘over there by the entrance. NOW!’
Maddy nodded meekly and hurried across the archway to join the others standing in the entrance and looking out at the jungle. Cartwright joined them, keeping a cautious few yards’ distance and holding his gun on them as he watched the evening jungle. ‘What happens next?’
‘The big wave,’ said Sal. ‘You’l feel dizzy just as it …’
She looked at him, her eyes round. ‘Do you feel it now?’
His eyes widened. ‘My God, yes! Like an earth tremor!’
On the horizon the orange stain of dusk was blot ed out by what appeared to be a rol ing bank of raincloud, a storm front rushing in from the Atlantic at an impossible speed.
‘What is that?’ he gasped.
‘What is that?’ he gasped.
‘The wave?’ whispered Edward.
Maddy nodded. ‘Another reality.’
It crossed over the island beyond the broad river and amid a churning soup of thick, shimmering air, realities mixed and became eeting impossibilities. Amid the churning reality soup they saw the winking ickering outline of tal buildings warping and twisting and Maddy thought she saw for a eeting moment a swarm of creatures in the sky like gargoyles, dragons – a possible reality, a possible species that in this correcting reality had no place, existing for a mere heartbeat, then erased. Then the wave was over the river and upon them. The archway exed and warped around them, the ground beneath their feet momentarily dropping away, becoming void.
Then, just like that, they were staring at a brick wal , ten feet opposite, across a cobbled stone backstreet. The rol ed-up tarpaulin with Forby’s corpse inside, that they’d placed just outside the entrance, was gone. Instead he was standing to one side of the entrance, talking in hushed tones with two other armed men. A spotlight ickered across the backstreet as overhead they heard the whupwhup-whup of a circling helicopter. Cartwright’s jaw hung slack and open, his gun arm lowered down to his side. ‘This … is … incredible.’
‘Isn’t it?’ said Maddy.
Forby looked up from his conversation. ‘Whuh? Oh, sir?
’ He looked perplexed, as did the other two men. ‘I uh …
’ He looked perplexed, as did the other two men. ‘I uh …
didn’t hear the door opening. You OK, sir?’
Cartwright’s face was stil immobile, stil frozen with incredulity.
‘Sir? Everything OK?’
He looked at his man. ‘Uh? Yes … yes, just ne.’ Alive once more. A faint smile of relief stretched across his thin lips. ‘Good to er … it’s good to see you again, Forby.’
Forby frowned and nodded. ‘Sir?’ Then he noticed Edward and Laura. ‘Who are these?’
Cartwright shook his head, gathering his confused wits.
‘I’l … I’l explain later.’ He turned to Maddy and the others. ‘Inside, you lot. Let’s close this door.’
Forby stepped forward but Cartwright waved him back.
‘You best stay outside for now, Forby, al right?’
He icked his gun at Laura. ‘Close the shut er.’
She began to crank the handle, but Sal stepped in and pressed the green but on. ‘It’s OK, we’ve got power now.’
The shut ers clat ered down as a smal motor beside the door whined.
The old man took a moment to compose himself, to try to make sense of what he’d seen, and what he may yet see before the night was through. The shut ers clat ered down and the whining motor was silent.
‘Al right,’ he said presently. ‘Al right, so this means your friend and the cloned girl … they’ve been successful. They’ve kil ed those freaks in the past. So that means no reptile hominids.’ He nodded as he talked. ‘Al right … I get that. I understand that.’
get that. I understand that.’
‘Cartwright,’ interrupted Maddy.
‘And … and Forby’s alive now, because … because …’
His eyes narrowed as he tried to make sense of things.
‘Because what happened … didn’t happen. No reptile monsters means he couldn’t have been at acked. But then that’s just crazy … that doesn’t make any … I mean … I actual y saw that thing rip his …’
He was rambling.
‘Cartwright,’ said Maddy again. ‘Listen to me, you need to hear something.’
‘… and he was dead.’ He turned to look at the oor. Halfway across, a pool of blood had congealed. Forby’s blood. ‘I mean … there! Look! It’s his blood! He was –’
‘Cartwright!’
The old man’s confused eyes darted from the blood back to Maddy.
‘This new reality is stil wrong,’ she said. ‘This reality with you and Forby and men outside and a helicopter buzzing overhead and your secret agency. It’s al wrong too. This is something else that should never have happened.’
‘What?’ His face creased with confusion.
‘Your life,’ said Sal. ‘Should be a very di erent one.’
‘In our timeline … in the correct timeline, you’ve lived a di erent life to this.’ Maddy tried appealing to him with a friendly smile. ‘Perhaps even a much bet er life … I dunno, with children, grandchildren?’
‘I’m not married!’ he snapped. ‘I don’t have children!’
‘I’m not married!’ he snapped. ‘I don’t have children!’
‘But, see, that’s what I’m saying –’
‘This agency is my wife! This secret! This secret! Time travel! It’s my secret. I know things that even our president doesn’t. I know time travel’s already happening! That’s what I’m married to! This … this knowledge! That’s my life!’ He raised his gun again and aimed at the frown between Maddy’s eyes. ‘And you’re not going to take that away! Do you hear? NO ONE IS GOING TO TAKE THAT
FROM ME!’
CHAPTER 77
1941, Somervel County, Texas
Liam spot ed them further up the river, two boys. One splashing around in the water, the other perched on a shelf of rock, sheltering from the scorching hot sun in a cool nook of shade.
Neither had seen him yet. His rst instinct had been to cal out to them, to nd out what they’d been doing so far today … to ask them if they’d found anything interesting. But then if they hadn’t yet, his intrusion on their day might alter what they did; change the sequence of events for today, and they might not make their discovery. So he decided to lie low and watch. He hunkered down in the shade of a yew tree and waited.
An hour passed, another, and another. The sun was wel past midday, the shadows slowly shifting and lengthening. He checked his watch again. The countdown was tel ing him he had less than two hours to go. He was beginning to wonder whether he was watching the wrong two boys, and perhaps another several hundred yards up the river two di erent lads were right now cooing and marvel ing over some incredible fossil writing they’d just discovered. Then the boy on the rock ledge cal ed out something.
‘Saul!’
‘Saul!’
‘What?’
He couldn’t quite make out what the lad on the ledge said next, but from where he was he could see the boy was turning something over and over in his hand. The boy in the water, Saul, didn’t seem particularly interested, content to continue paddling around in aimless circles. The other, frustrated at his companion’s lack of interest, suddenly leaped o the ledge and into the river, swimming across to join him in the shal ows. He showed Saul what he had in his hands, and among a garble of exchanged words Liam made out two distinct ones: look and message. That’s it, then!
He pul ed himself up, grimacing at the stab of pins and needles in his feet, and made his way towards them. ‘Hey there, lads!’ he cal ed out.
Both of them turned to look at him. ‘Hey there!’ he said again, trying to sound as friendly as possible and not frighten them o . But as he drew closer he could see both of them regarded him warily.
‘Hey … it’s al right, now. I’m not going to eat you. Just saying hel o is al I’m doing.’
‘Ma says we cain’t talk to no strangers, mister,’ said the boy holding the rock.
Liam drew up a few yards short of them. He hunkered down on his haunches and o ered them a friendly smile.
‘Wel now, my name’s Liam, Liam O’Connor. So I suppose I’m no longer a stranger.’
Both boys nodded at the unfailing logic of that. Both boys nodded at the unfailing logic of that.
‘I’m Saul. This here’s m’ brother Grady.’
Saul looked at him. ‘You sound funny,’ he said. ‘An’ you got strange clothes. Where you from?’
‘Ireland,’ said Liam.
The boy looked at his face curiously. ‘What’s wrong with you, mister?’
Liam shrugged, bemused by the odd question. ‘Nothing’s wrong with me.’
‘You sick or something?’
He real y didn’t have the time for this. ‘No, I’m perfectly ne.’ He gestured at the rock Grady was trying to keep from his prying eyes. ‘What’s that you got there, lad?’
Grady hid the rock behind his back defensively. ‘Ain’t nothin’.’
‘Oh, come on.’ He inched a lit le closer. ‘Is it money?
Did you nd some money up there?’
‘No.’ Grady shook his head warily. ‘Didn’t nd no money.’
‘It’s just some words on a stupid stone,’ said Saul.
‘Somebody made a message on a stone.’
Liam o ered them a look of mild interest. ‘Real y? How interesting. Can I see?’
Grady shook his head. ‘It’s mine.’
If he’d been a bit smarter about this, if he’d thought ahead, he’d have brought something to trade – a cool toy, a pack of basebal cards, a bag of sweets or something, even some …
Of course. He suddenly remembered he had on him Of course. He suddenly remembered he had on him something way bet er than any of those. Something either boy couldn’t fail to be entranced by. ‘Hang on,’ he said, digging into the thigh pocket of his tat ered shorts. It was in there somewhere stil . He’d … ah, his ngers found the sharp edge. A moment later he pul ed out a four-inch-long shhook-shaped object. He held it out in front of him and their eyes widened. ‘It’s a claw,’ said Liam. ‘A real dinosaur claw.’
Saul’s and Grady’s jaws dropped open synchronously as four young eyes admired the vicious-looking nicks along the curved edge of the claw.
‘See, I just found it this morning, up the river, so I did. I heard you can nd al sorts of fascinating old things along this river. Want to hold it?’
Both their heads nodded vigorously.
‘We could swap,’ said Liam. ‘You can take a look at my claw … and I’l look at that message stone of yours.’
‘Sure,’ said Grady quickly, the passing fascination with his curious nd more than trumped by the four-inch glistening claw dangling from Liam’s ngers. He passed his rock over without another look at it. ‘Message don’t make no sense to me anyways.’
He reached out for the claw.
‘Careful, it’s quite sharp,’ said Liam.
Grady took it o Liam and then hunched over, turning his back on his brother.
‘Hey! Grady, lemmesee too.’
Grady shook his head. ‘My stone, my rst look-see.’
Grady shook his head. ‘My stone, my rst look-see.’
‘Aw, come on, lemmesee! Lemmesee!’
Liam found a boulder nearby and let himself sti y down on to it, ignoring their squabbling. As he turned the at nugget of dark slate over in the palm of his hand, his heart silently skipped a beat.
Jay-zus … there you are again. After al this time. My silent messenger.
There it was, his own handwriting, reversed and faintly embossed with web-thin ridges and grooves of rock compressed and preserved by time.
‘You’re right,’ he said, looking up from the rock, ‘the words make no sense at al , do they?’ But Grady wasn’t listening. He was entranced by the vicious-looking claw and too busy fending o Saul’s grabbing hands.
‘It’s just a load of gibberish,’ he said, a knowing halfsmile spread across his face.
‘Wanna swap, mister?’ asked Grady. ‘My stone for your claw?’
Liam shrugged as casual y as he dared. ‘I dunno … my claw’s a pret y good nd an’ al –’
‘Please …!’ The boy dug deep into the pockets of his own trousers and produced a wooden yo-yo. ‘I’l throw this in for extra!’
Liam made a show of interest in the toy. He’d had one just like it back in Cork: large, cumbersome and one he’d never managed to get on with.
‘Wel … al right, then, I suppose. Yo-yo as wel , you’ve got yourself a deal.’
got yourself a deal.’
They exchanged a solemn nod in silence – a deal o cial y sealed – and then Liam picked himself wearily up, for some reason feeling as old as the hil s, and politely bade farewel . But both boys were already stuck back in a heated debate about the rights of access to the claw, and who was going to hold it al the way home.
He picked his way back along the shingle of the riverbank, through sliding, clacking wet pebbles, running his ngers across those faint embossed lines and his eyes looking for that smal cairn of stones.
CHAPTER 78
2001, New York
Sal felt it again, the early ripples, the faintest sensation of dizziness. But it looked like no one else had felt it. Cartwright stil had his gun on Maddy.
‘This … this is my life. This world. This reality!’
‘Y-you have to step outside now … rejoin your men,’
replied Maddy rmly.
Sal was impressed with her calm, her cool in the face of his wavering gun.
The old man shook his head and laughed. ‘What?
You’re expecting me to just walk away from this? The greatest discovery in the history of mankind … and what? I just walk out into that backstreet and try to forget about it?
’ Sal glanced at the other two kids. They met her gaze; eyes exchanging a shared imperative.
We’ve got to do something.
‘Listen!’ cut in Maddy. ‘If the wave comes and goes while you’re in here … y-you’l be left behind. It’l rewrite the present without you –’
He smiled. ‘Oh … I think I could live with that, Maddy. In fact, I’ve been waiting a long, long time for something like –’
like –’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘This isn’t about state security any more, is it?’
He shrugged. ‘Al right, yes! And why not? This thing …
this time machine … it’s a boy’s dream! It’s a man’s dream!
Mankind’s dream, goddammit! To travel anywhere, to any time, to see it al . To see things no other human wil ever see!’‘It’s not a toy, Cartwright. You know you … you just can’t think of it that w-way.’
‘Oh, right! You … some snot-nosed teenager and her buddies … you’re to be entrusted instead, are you? You’re the guardians of time, huh?’
Sal glanced at the others again, then took a hesitant step towards the old man. She looked to see if the other two were going to do likewise. Laura remained where she was, trembling, face ashen. She shook her head. Too frightened. Edward, however, took a silent step forward along with Sal.She had no idea what she intended to do – make a grab for the gun?
Oh God, the thought made her knees wobble.
‘I was selected!’ replied Maddy. ‘I didn’t freakin’ want this, Cartwright! Jesus! In fact, I didn’t have much of a freakin’ choice at al !’
The old man shrugged. ‘Guess what? I don’t real y care.’
He stepped towards her, across snaking cables. ‘This is what I want. And I’ve spent my life waiting for it. Preparing for it.’
Preparing for it.’
Sal noticed something blinking on one of the monitors.
‘I’m an old man,’ he continued, stepping on to concrete oor in the middle of the archway, clear of any cables that could trip him up. Al the while the aim of his gun remained resolutely on Maddy. ‘My whole life, my whole adult life, has been leading towards this moment. And I’ve known for so many years that a time machine was going to arrive under this bridge, in this archway, on September tenth, 2001.’ He sighed. ‘Can you imagine what knowing about something like that does to you? Knowing that near the end of your natural life … something truly wonderful is going to happen.’ He shook his head. ‘And what?’ He laughed drily. ‘You’re tel ing me to just forget about it?
Just walk away and forget about it?’
Over Maddy’s shoulder Sal could see the blinking cursor in Bob’s dialogue box. He was trying to tel Maddy something. A warning of the impending time wave?
‘The things I’ve wanted to see, Maddy Carter … the things I’ve dreamed of seeing over the last fteen years, the destruction of Pompei , the fal of Atlantis, the cruci xion of Christ … the bat le of Bunker Hil , George Washington crossing the Delaware, Lincoln giving his Get ysburg address! The arrival of Columbus …’ His rheumy old eyes were alive with naive wonder. ‘My God! The impact of the K–T asteroid that ended the time of the dinosaurs! Can you imagine actual y seeing that impact for yourself?’ He shook his head. ‘How far back can I go? Do you know?’
Maddy spread her hands. ‘I … I don’t know. I –’
Maddy spread her hands. ‘I … I don’t know. I –’
‘The beginning of life on earth? The rst division of cel s?’ Cartwright seemed lost in his reverie, of the things he could see, the places he could go. Al his now for the taking.
Sal suddenly felt the hairs on her forearms stand on end, and knew it was here – the time wave. A moment later the ceiling light dimmed and ickered and they al felt it, a moment of imbalance, the oor dropping away beneath their feet. The monitors over Maddy’s shoulder al ickered and went dead. Laura cried in alarm and Edward gasped as the ceiling light ickered o , leaving them, for a moment, in complete darkness.
Then the monitors ickered back on and the ceiling light zzed, blinked and bathed the archway in its cold blue glare once more.
Cartwright giggled joyously. ‘Good God! That was it?
Wasn’t it?’
Maddy nodded slowly. ‘Yeah … I think it was.’ She looked at him accusingly. ‘You should’ve been outside our eld. You should have been out there with your people. This messes things up. This –’
‘But I wasn’t outside,’ he said calmly. ‘So why don’t you just get over it?’
‘You don’t understand … you’ve been writ en out of the present. I’ve got no idea what that means to you or –’
‘That suits me ne,’ he smiled.
Sal noticed the blinking cursor was back on-screen and al of a sudden it occurred to her what Bob was al of a sudden it occurred to her what Bob was desperately trying to tel Maddy.
‘Maddy!’ she cried, pointing at the monitors. ‘You need to look!’
Maddy turned to glance over her shoulder. ‘Oh no!’ She turned back to Cartwright. ‘GET OUT OF THERE!’
His wiry brow furrowed. ‘Uh? What’s up?’
‘MOVE!’ she screamed.
The displacement machine’s hum changed in tone as stored-up energy prepared to be released.
‘LOOK!’ shouted Maddy, pointing to the ground at Cartwright’s feet. He looked down, wondering what was so special about a chalk circle and, within, a smal irregular section of the grubby concrete oor scooped out and …
‘OH GOD, CARTWRIGHT, GET OUT!’
It happened in nanoseconds, the instant appearance of a sphere of energy around the old man. Most of him was inside, al but his left hand.
Sal thought she saw in that eeting moment dark shapes swirling around him like demons or ghosts, a window on to some world that an uneducated person, a superstitious person, someone from the Dark Ages, might have cal ed Hel .
Then he was swept away. Gone.
The sphere pulsed and shimmered, and now she could see what appeared to be an undulating Texas-blue sky, and an arid and drab landscape … and the wavering outline of a shape stepping through. Liam staggered into view with a distinct look of nausea on his face, and a moment later the distinct look of nausea on his face, and a moment later the sphere of supercharged tachyon particles vanished with a soft pop of rushing air.
‘Jeez, that was an odd one,’ he said queasily, bending over, nauseous and heaving.
‘Liam!’ yelped Maddy. ‘Oh my God … I thought you were going to get al mushed up with Cartwright! I …’
He raised a hand to hush her. ‘Just a second, just a second … I’m gonna –’
He threw up on the oor and on to the stil -twitching hand Cartwright had left behind.
Sal rushed over to him. ‘Liam? You OK?’
He wiped his mouth and looked up at her with his bloodshot eye. ‘I … I just … I’m al right now.’ He straightened up and looked down in disgust at the hand and the acrid-smel ing puddle at his feet. ‘That wasn’t like I’m used to. That one felt real y odd, so it did.’
Maddy shook her head. ‘I’m not sure what happened. Cartwright was standing in the circle. I forgot the countdown was due.’ There were tears in her eyes, running down her cheeks. ‘Oh God, Liam, I thought you were going to end up a twisted mess with him and …’
‘Wel …’ Liam rubbed his mouth dry and grinned. ‘I’m al right now, aren’t I?’ He spread his hands and looked down at himself. ‘Or have I got an extra arm or something stuck on the back of me head?’
She nodded, wiped her eyes and laughed. ‘No … no, you’re just ne as you are.’
‘Did it work?’ asked Liam. ‘Has anyone looked outside?’
‘Did it work?’ asked Liam. ‘Has anyone looked outside?’
‘I think a time wave came,’ said Laura, looking at Sal for con rmation.
‘That’s right.’ Sal nodded. ‘I’l go see.’
She turned back to the entrance, hit the but on and the shut er slowly began to crank up. They gathered around the rising corrugated shut er and as it lurched to a halt they stepped outside into the dark night.
Manhat an glistened brightly across the Hudson, a towering wedding cake of lights. A commuter train rumbled overhead along the Wil iamsburg Bridge, and the evening was l ed with the soothing white noise of far-o tra c and the echoing wail of a police siren.
‘Normal New York,’ said Liam. He pu ed out a weary sigh. ‘That was a bleedin’ mess and a half we got out of, so it was.’
Sal reached out and hugged him tightly, embarrassed by the tears rol ing down her cheeks. She squeezed him in a self-conscious way, just like anyone might a big brother, and then let him go.
‘But here we are again,’ she whispered.
They watched New York in silence, each of them lost in their own thoughts for a long while.
Maddy stirred. ‘I bet er go and sort out the return window for the support –’ she corrected herself – ‘for Becks.’ She turned and headed back inside.
The rest of them savoured the evening panorama, watching beads of car headlights edging forward along FDR Drive across the river, and a ferry cut ing the mirrored FDR Drive across the river, and a ferry cut ing the mirrored re ection of Manhat an with its wake. Final y, it was Edward who stated the obvious as-yet-un nished business.
‘Me and Laura, we got to go back, don’t we? To get things back to the way they were?’
‘Yes,’ Liam nodded. ‘But I don’t suppose it has to be tonight.’
‘Good,’ whispered Laura, ‘I’m not feeling so good.’
‘We’ve got some beds back inside,’ said Sal. She looked at the girl and the Chinese boy. Both looked pale and il , their faces smudged with a fortnight’s worth of grime. And Liam … She realized he looked disconcertingly old and young at the same time with that streak of white hair at his temple.
‘I’l go make some co ee,’ she said.
CHAPTER 79
65 mil ion years BC, jungle
Becks watched the pyre of logs and branches burn. Amid curling tongues of ame she could just about make out the outline of the several dozen bodies she’d stacked on top. The log bridge was gone now, its counterweight device dismantled like their windmil and tossed on the re as kindling. The palisade, the lean-tos, al gone as wel . The assorted rucksacks, basebal caps, jackets, mobile phones that had own back into the past, al of them tossed on the re.By morning those things would be nothing more than soot or contorted puddles of plastic that would eventual y break down over tens of thousands of years into minute untraceable contaminants.
Her computer mind took a moment to make a detailed audit of al the other items of forensic evidence that marked their two-week stay here. The human bodies she’d been unable to retrieve: Franklyn, Ranjit and Kel y. Of those, only Franklyn had died in a location that would one day yield fossils, and even then it was statistical y unlikely that his body was going to be preserved in a way that would produce anything. A corpse needed to be almost immediately covered by a layer of sediment to stand a immediately covered by a layer of sediment to stand a chance of that. Those three bodies, wherever they lay, were exposed to the elements, to scavengers. Bul ets and casings lit ered the clearing. But they too would soon become unidenti able nuggets of rust in this humid jungle. Perhaps, a hundred years from now, no more than stains of oxidized soil on the jungle oor. She was satis ed that the sheer weight of time and natural processes would wipe their presence clean. There was always the remote possibility that a footprint or the unnatural scar of an axe blade on a tree trunk might just, somehow, become an immortalized impression on a fragment of rock. But the probability factors she crunched yielded an acceptable contamination risk.
Her partial y healed stomach wound had ripped open as she’d laboured on the funeral pyre, but a dark plug of congealing scab prevented any further valuable blood leaking out of her. The dressing on her arm had also unwound earlier, revealing red-raw muscle tissue and bone. A layer of skin over the top of that would have o ered her damaged limb some protection – instead the fragile workings of her arm were now clogged with dirt and twigs and leaves and al manner of bugs. An infection advisory ashed quietly in the background of her mind, along with several others that warned her that her biological combat chassis had su ered enough damage to warrant immediate medical at ention. As she watched tongues of orange lash up into the Cretaceous night sky towards a moon a hat size too big, she detected the rst towards a moon a hat size too big, she detected the rst precursor particles of the scheduled window and stepped towards the open ground where it was due to open. She looked back one last time at the re and picked out the dark twisted limbs of the hominid species amid the ames. For a moment she felt something she couldn’t identify: sadness, was it? Guilt? Al she knew was that it came from a part of her mind that didn’t organize thoughts into mission priorities and strategic options. A sphere of churning air suddenly winked into existence in front of her and calmly, impassively, she stepped forward through sixty-ve mil ion years into a dimly lit brick archway.
The rst face her eyes registered through the shimmering was Liam O’Connor’s. He smiled tiredly and she momentarily wondered if his mind was ashing the human equivalent set of damage advisory warnings.
‘Welcome home, Becks,’ he said softly and then, without any warning, he clasped his arms around her. ‘We did it!’
he mut ered into her ear.
She processed the curious gesture and her silicon swiftly came back with the recommendation that returning the demonstration of a ection would be an acceptably appropriate response. Her good arm closed around his narrow shoulders.
‘A rmative, Liam … we did it.’
CHAPTER 80
2001, New York
Monday (time cycle 50)
They stayed for a few days, Edward and Laura. Maddy said they were probably su ering some sort of radiation sickness from the lab explosion and needed some rest and recuperation. It was nice to have some new faces around here for a while, anyway. But Maddy said they had to go. She was right, of course. They had things to do, lives to go and lead.
But not long lives … not Edward, anyway.
I read his le on our computer. This is so sad. He wil write his great maths paper in 2029 that wil change the world, and he’l be just twenty-two when he does that. But then he’l be dead from cancer before his twenty-seventh birthday.
Cancer at twenty-seven?
That seems so unfair. Twenty-seven years isn’t a life. It’s just a taster of life, isn’t it? I know I couldn’t have told him that and, even if I could, would it have been fair to tel him? Would anyone want to know the exact day they were going to die? I know I wouldn’t.
We were going to send them back to 2015; that was the original plan. But Maddy gured that wasn’t going to original plan. But Maddy gured that wasn’t going to work: they’ve both seen too much; they both know too much. Maybe that’s not so important for the girl Laura. Maybe her life isn’t ever going to a ect the world that much. But Chan … he’s everything the future’s going to be. It al kind of starts with what he’s going to one day write in a paper.
So what did we do? We left them outside when the eld reset. We watched with the shut er open. We watched time come and take them away. Reality just erased them, like someone deleting les o a computer. Maddy says she’s pret y sure that’s going to make things al right again. Reality wil bring them back. They’l be born once more, like al the other kids who died; they’l be born … be babies, toddlers, kids, teenagers a second time. Only this time they’l visit some energy lab in 2015 and then get to go home and tel their mums and dads what a total y boring day trip they had.
Wel , at least that’s what we’re hoping.
And what about the person, whoever that was, who tried to kil Edward? I suppose we’l know whether history’s been changed enough that he or she makes some di erent choices. If we get the same message again from the future … then, wel , we’l have to deal with this al over again, won’t we? Hopeful y not.
We just have to wait and see if this xes everything. Nothing’s certain. Nothing’s nal.
‘Everything’s uid’… that’s Maddy’s phrase. What does that real y mean?
that real y mean?
So, the female support unit, Becks (stil trying to get used to that name), is stil healing. Those creatures real y messed her arm up by the look of it. Bob says the regrown skin wil probably show a lot of scarring, and the muscles and tendons may never be ful y functional again. Which led to an argument between Maddy and Liam.
Maddy suggested ushing the body and growing a new support unit, one of the big tough male ones. But Liam got angry. He said ‘she deserves bet er’.
I don’t know what I think. After al , they’re just organic robots, aren’t they? And whatever knowledge her AI picked up would be saved, right?
But Liam says there’s more to them than just the computer … there’s something else in there, something human-like in their heads. So maybe he’s right. It does seem unfair to do that to her. After al , it seems she did real y wel .
Anyway, she’s got a name … I mean, how can you just ush something away that’s got, like, a name? It’s wrong, isn’t it?
Seems like the argument’s al set led now, though. Looks like we’re keeping her but also growing another Bob. Maddy said there seemed to be nothing in the ‘how to’ manual that says we can’t have two support units. So why not?
CHAPTER 81
2001, New York
The old man was sit ing on the park bench and throwing nuggets of dough from the crusty end of a hot-dog bun to a strut ing pack of impatient pigeons.
‘I knew I’d nd you here,’ said Maddy.
He looked up at her and smiled a greeting. She closed her eyes and turned her face up towards the clear blue September sky and for a moment savoured the warmth of the sun on her pal id cheeks.
‘Unobscured sun and a good hot dog … that’s what you said,’ she added, ‘and where else in Manhat an’s forest of skyscrapers are you going to get that?’
Foster laughed drily. ‘Clever girl.’
She opped down on the park bench next to him.
‘We’ve real y missed you. I’ve missed you.’
‘It’s only been a few hours,’ he said, tossing another doughy nugget out among the birds.
‘What? It’s been months –’
‘Yes, but for me,’ he said, ‘just a few hours.’ He looked at her. ‘Remember, I’m out of the loop now. I’m out of the time bubble. I said goodbye to you on a Monday morning.’
He looked down at his watch. ‘And now it’s nearly one o’clock on the very same Monday.’
o’clock on the very same Monday.’
She shook her head. ‘Yes, of course. Stupid of me. I knew that.’
They sat in silence for a while and watched a toddler on reins at empt to scare away the pigeons by stamping her lit le feet. The birds merely gave her a wide berth as she ambled through and then returned, to hungrily resume pecking at the crumbs of bread on the ground in her wake.
‘You hinted you’d be here, didn’t you? When we parted?’
Foster nodded. ‘I suppose I felt a lit le guilty leaving you so soon.’ He pu ed out his sal ow cheeks. ‘But I’m dying, Maddy. I won’t last very much longer.’
‘The tachyon corruption?’
‘Yes. It plays merry havoc at a genetic level. It’s like a computer virus, rewriting lines of code with gibberish. Out here,’ he sighed, ‘outside the time bubble, I might get a lit le longer to live. I might get a week or two more. Maybe a month if I’m lucky. That would be nice.’
She thought about that for a moment. ‘But … you’l always be …?’
‘That’s right, Madelaine. From your point of view, I’l always be found here in Central Park, at twelve fty-two a.m. on Monday the tenth of September. Like al these other people,’ he said, gesturing at the busy park, the queue of people standing beside the hot-dog vendor across the grass, ‘like them, I’ve become part of the furniture of here and now … part of the wal paper. That’s the other reason why I left.’
reason why I left.’
She frowned, not get ing that.
‘If I’d stayed with you and the others … I’d be long gone by now. This way, I can stil help you. Someone to talk to.’
‘Ah.’ She nodded.
‘But each time you come and nd me, Madelaine, remember, each time you come and nd me … it’l be the rst time for me. Do you see what I mean?’
Of course it would. She realized, for the old man, Monday had been a co ee and a bagel and a goodbye. And now, three hours later, a momentary reunion in Central Park. Each time the eld o ce reset itself, any conversation he had with her … never happened. For Foster there’d be no memory of it.
He laughed. ‘It’l be like visiting some senile old fogey in a madhouse. You’l have to get used to repeating yourself.’
She shared his chuckle. ‘I had a boyfriend like that once. He never listened to me.’
He sni ed. ‘You came here, I presume, because you need help?’
‘Wel , we did have a problem, but it’s al xed now, I think.’
He pat ed her arm. ‘See? I knew you lot were ready.’
‘Hardly. We scraped through this one, Foster. It was a close-run thing.’
She gave him the bare bones of their story. Foster shook his head. ‘Dinosaur times?’ he whispered. ‘I … I never thought the machine could take us so far back.’
thought the machine could take us so far back.’
‘You never did that?’
‘No. Never that far. How’s Liam?’
‘Wel , that’s just it. I don’t know how much damage that did to him. It’s de nitely done something to him, aged him in some ways. He has …’ She looked at Foster, and for the rst time, she noticed the rheumy whites of his eyes were faintly laced with the scars of old burst blood vessels. ‘Like you, haemorrhaging. And a streak of white hair. Who knows what’s been damaged inside him. I mean, that’s just what I can see. Foster, how long can he take this kind of punishment? How long do you think he wil live?’
He sucked in air through his teeth. ‘Wel , he’s a tough old soul. I can tel you that. But, you see … it al depends on where and when he goes, Madelaine. Who knows how long he’s got?’
That didn’t help much.
‘Do I tel him or not, Foster? You know, he’s not blind. He’s seen his bad eye, he’s seen his hair. He jokes about it, but he’s not stupid. He must know this isn’t good for him.’
He shook his head. ‘I know he’l cope. But whether you tel him has to be your cal . You’re the one in charge now. I can give you what advice I can, but command decisions are yours. That’s how it is.’ He tossed the last of his bun in among the birds. ‘I can’t run the eld o ce from out here on a park bench. You’re the boss now.’
‘But what about the agency? Is there someone else I can talk to? Someone in charge?’
‘I … I’m sorry, Madelaine. That’s … that’s o limits. You
‘I … I’m sorry, Madelaine. That’s … that’s o limits. You have to treat this like you’re entirely on your own. Do you understand? You’re on your own.’
She cursed. ‘What sort of useless freakin’ agency is this?’
He pursed his lips sympathetical y. ‘I’m afraid that’s just how it is.’
She ground her teeth in silent frustration for a while, knowing there was nothing more Foster could o er her on the subject of Liam. In any case, there was a new pair of glasses she was due to pick up from the opticians. They’d promised her they’d be ready in a couple of hours and another day of squinting at monitors and get ing a migraine for her troubles was something she could live without.
She stood up. ‘I’d bet er go. Things to do.’
He stood up, slowly, achingly. Polite, like a true gentleman.
‘You’l be here again?’ asked Maddy. ‘For sure? Every Monday at this time?’
‘Of course,’ he grinned. ‘I do charge by the hour, though.
’ She laughed then hugged him, awkward and faltering.
‘Enjoy your day, Foster.’
‘Oh, I have a fun-packed afternoon planned.’
She squeezed his arm. ‘Take care. I’l drop by and see you again soon.’ She turned to walk down the path leading to the south-west gate. But a thought suddenly occurred to her. She stopped, turned and saw him standing there among his pigeons, watching her go, almost as if he’d been among his pigeons, watching her go, almost as if he’d been expecting her to stop and turn.
‘Foster? How can you be so sure Liam wil cope? What if he works out he’s dying? What’s he gonna do? He might choose to leave us.’
‘He’l do the right thing,’ he replied. ‘You’l always be able to rely on that … the right thing. He’s a good lad.’ He turned away and began to wade through a parting sea of ru ing grey feathers and curious beady eyes.
‘Foster! How can you be so sure?’
He stopped in his tracks and looked back over his shoulder. ‘How can I be so sure?’
She nodded. ‘I mean, come on! Who the hel would be stupid enough to keep doing something they know’s kil ing them? What makes you think you know him so wel ?’
‘Oh, I know –’ he cocked an eyebrow – ‘because he’s me.’
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