by Alex Scarrow
CHAPTER 11
2001, New York
Liam’s stomach was groaning from the burden of consuming a dozen pancakes glistening with maple syrup. He belched so loudly it made Sal jump.
‘Shadd-yah, you are too gross!’
‘Sorry,’ he uttered shamefaced as he sat down in front of the computer screen. ‘Hello, Bob.’
› Hello, Liam, did you enjoy a good breakfast?
‘I did, thank you. Although I’m feelin’ as sick as a butcher’s dog.’
› Information: I have two notifications for you. The displacement machine is fully charged and ready to activate the return portal. Also, the support unit in growth-cycle is now ready to be ejected.
‘Thanks, Bob. Looks like you’re going to be walking around with the living again soon enough.’
› I am very pleased. I enjoyed working with you in the past, Liam O’Connor.
‘And me with you. Be good to have another man about the place, so it will. It’s gettin’ all frilly and girlie in this place.’
› I do not understand. Please explain ‘frilly and girlie’.
‘Just a turn of phrase, Bob.’ He turned to Sal, pulling a face at her.
‘Well, I’m not frilly and girlie,’ she huffed.
Liam chuckled. ‘All right, Bob, which should we do first? Bring back the ladies or toss the new clone out of his tube?’
› Recommendation: I suggest activating the return portal first.
‘Right you are. Let’s get a wiggle on and do that, then.’
CHAPTER 12
1994, UEA campus, Norwich
Maddy checked her watch: they had a few minutes to spare before the portal was due to open. The return coordinates were outside, beside a service entrance behind the university’s pool building. It was gone 2 a.m. and the hustle of life after dark on the campus had died down to the snuffling of a fox going through bags of rubbish nearby and the far-off wail of a police siren.
‘Becks?’
‘Yes.’
‘I need to discuss something. It’s something that — ’ She frowned as she tried to find the right words. ‘It’s something I’ve been keeping from the other two, because … well, because I have to. But I need someone else to talk to about it. It’s driving me nuts.’
‘You wish to talk to me confidentially?’
‘Yes … but I know everything I say to you becomes data. Everything you see, hear, becomes data that’s available to the others.’
‘I can partition my hard drive and create a folder that is accessible only after a certain code word is used. Data that is acquired while the partition is open will be stored there. The partition can be closed again and access-locked with the use of the same or a different code word.’
‘Do you mean everything you hear, see …? If we were to have a conversation while this partition is open, the memory of it would remain in there? Would remain a secret?’
‘That is correct. My normal functioning AI would also not be aware of those memories until you activated them with the code word.’
Maddy understood. It would almost be as if Becks was operating as a schizophrenic: a person with a multiple-personality disorder, unaware of the actions of the other personality. A little bit weird, to be honest. But she needed someone to help her make sense of things, someone to help her connect the dots. Something was going on out there, someone wanted her to know something … just her.
‘Do that, please, Becks: set up your separate partition.’
‘Affirmative.’
Becks’s eyes blinked rapidly, her cool emotionless gaze lost and far away for a moment.
‘Information: partitioned drive ready. Please provide an access code.’
‘What — anything? Any word?’
‘Recommendation: three words one after the other that would not normally appear next to each other in sequence during a normal conversation. This would provide adequately strong security.’
‘What, like … banana — alien — jigsaw?’
‘Correct. Is this your code-word sequence?’
‘No, hang on. I’d forget that. Let me think.’ She rubbed at her chin thoughtfully as the police siren faded, leaving the night still, quiet.
‘OK, this’ll do: iPad — Caveman — Breakfast.’
‘This is your code-word sequence?’
‘Yes.’
Becks blinked again. ‘Security measure activated. The partition is open.’ She turned slowly to look at Maddy. ‘I am listening, Maddy.’
‘OK.’ Maddy puffed a breath. ‘OK … this is what I’ve been keeping from Liam and Sal. When we went to get some new clone foetuses, back before that whole dinosaur mess — before you were grown, Becks — we got the foetuses from the San Francisco drop point, the one based in 1906. There was this secure deposit box where we found a crate of refrigerated embryos. But also there was this note … all scribbled, like somebody had tried to sneak it in real quick. It was a message addressed to me, for my eyes only. Liam didn’t see it. So it’s just me knows about it.’
Becks nodded. ‘Do you wish to tell me what the message was?’
‘You promise me this is all secret?’
She nodded. ‘It is password protected. When you have finished discussing the matter with me and speak the code-word sequence, my normal AI will only be aware that a duration of time has passed without sensory data being collected.’
‘Right. OK. Well, this was what the note said: Maddy, look out for “Pandora”, we’re running out of time. Be safe and tell no one.’
Becks nodded and looked at her. ‘This is why you instructed Liam not to come along on this mission?’
‘That’s right. And … obviously, when I saw the phrase this Adam guy decoded and posted publicly, it contained the word Pandora.’ She bit her lip for a moment. ‘My God, Becks … I can only think it’s someone trying to contact me through this Voynich thing?’
‘The Voynich Manuscript is approximately nine hundred years old.’
‘I know! I know! That’s what’s so creepy! Somebody nearly a thousand years ago wants to talk to me! Why?’
‘I have no data to answer that.’
‘And what was that weird stuff Adam said he had to tell me?’
‘Seek Cabot at Kirklees in 1194.’
‘What’s a Cabot? Or who?’
‘I have no data at this time.’
‘We have to go back there, Becks. If “1194” is a year! We’ve got to go back to that time and find out what Pandora means, what it refers to. And why it’s me — me, of all people, who needs to know.’
‘That would seem the logical next step.’ Becks raised a hand. ‘I am detecting tachyon particles.’
Maddy looked at her watch. They’d run out of time to talk this through; the portal was moments away from arriving. ‘Becks, can we talk about this again?’
‘Affirmative. You should close the partition with the code-word sequence now. When you wish to resume this conversation, repeat the sequence to open my drive.’
‘OK. Here it is, then: iPad — Caveman — Breakfast.’
Becks blinked rapidly several times, then her head cocked on one side, curious. ‘I appear to have two minutes thirty-two seconds of unlogged time.’ She turned to Maddy. ‘Did I malfunction in any way?’
The air in front of them pulsed, stirring plastic bags and newspapers into chasing each other in the dark. Ahead she could see the shimmering forms of their colleagues: Sal waving, Liam doing bunny ears behind her head.
‘No, you’ve been just fine, Becks. Perfectly fine. Let’s go home, shall we?’
CHAPTER 13
1994, Norwich
Adam’s hand throbbed. The tall girl with the surprisingly strong grip hadn’t in fact broken his finger, just stretched the tendons in his hand. Not broken, but still incredibly painful. Under normal circumstances it would have been painful enough for him to take himself to the campus walk-in surgery for a splint or icepack and some serious painkillers, but he was distracted enough
that the throbbing in his finger was, for the moment, ignorable.
It can’t be. That’s what his mind was muttering to itself. It just can’t be.
‘What we’ve got to do is get back home to 2001.’ That’s what the girl with the glasses had said while he’d stood in the bathroom, holding his breath and listening to them. ‘Then I’ll send a warning message into the future, to 2056.’
He’d nearly laughed out loud at that. If he had, it would have been the shrill humourless laugh of someone losing their mind. Because this — the stuff they were saying — it was plain crazy, right? Because … because 2001 was seven years from now. 2001 was the future.
Mission Control to Adam, his mind chastised him, are you about to tell yourself that they’re time travellers? Is that it? Have you really gone that insane?
He nodded and chuckled to himself. ‘Yes … that’s it. Maybe I’ve gone completely mad.’ He was halfway to accepting that was what was wrong with him. His two visitors, his throbbing finger, all of it, were just elements of a paranoid delusion. After all, he’d been hiding out in this room for nearly a week, living like a hermit. Beginning to see things.
He decided that the sensible little voice in his head was most probably right, that this was a sign it was time to go see a campus councillor. And maybe, just maybe, he or she could explain to him in a perfectly rational way how come he’d found a message, written in modern English, in a document nearly a thousand years old; how come he was imagining visitations from time-travel girls from the future.
He laughed at how crazy it all sounded.
He was just about ready to admit he’d gone completely insane and help when he noticed a twist of paper on his bed where the girl — Maddy, that’s the name; that’s what your hallucinated visitor called herself, wasn’t it? — had placed her jacket. He reached over tentatively to pick it up, hoping it was just one more example of his mind playing tricks on him and it would vanish in a puff of delusion before he even managed to touch it.
Only it didn’t.
‘Errr … Adam to Mission Control … it’s, uhh … it’s …’ he muttered, turning the twist of coloured paper over in his hand. ‘This is real? Right? I’m not hallucinating this, am I?’
Mission Control had nothing useful to add at this point in time.
He looked closely at the paper in his hand. It was a ticket stub. An entry ticket to what appeared to be a nightclub or a bar or something. The address was West 51st Street, New York. What’s more, it had a date and an admission time stamped faintly like ticker-tape along the bottom.
20:21 — 09-09-2001.
All of a sudden he felt light-headed: dizzy and queasy, excited and terrified all at the same time. He looked again at the faintly printed time and date: 9 September 2001, seven years from now, the girl who’d just left his room was going to go to this New York nightclub.
It was one thing too many for him. He lost balance and flopped face forward on to his mattress.
Outside he heard the clump of boots on the stairs and a moment later a heavy fist on his door. ‘Hey, Adam! Who were those girls?’ Lance’s voice sounded far away; it sounded utterly inconsequential.
‘Suit yourself … you stay in there, you little freak. But tell your weird freak friends not to come round so late next time, right?’
Adam heard none of that. He was already busy mapping out the next seven years of his life.
CHAPTER 14
2001, New York
‘All right, stand clear, everyone!’
Sal crouched down and thumbed an icon on the growth tube’s small glowing touchscreen. A motor softly whirred at the bottom of the perspex tube and it slowly tilted backwards to a forty-five degree angle. A moment later the bottom of the tube opened and a flood-tide of foul-smelling gunk splashed out on to the floor of the back room.
Bob’s glistening, baby-smooth body slipped out of the tube and across the floor like a freshly landed blue marlin on the foredeck of a fishing boat.
‘It’s a boy!’ announced Liam.
‘This time round,’ added Maddy.
The newly birthed clone stirred on the floor, grey eyes opening and gazing up at them. They crouched around him, cooing like proud parents. ‘Liam,’ said Liam, pointing to himself. ‘My name’s Liam.’
The clone opened his mouth and vomited a river of pink gunk down the front of his muscular chest.
‘Oh, that’s our Bob all right,’ said Sal.
‘Negative.’ Becks squatted down to inspect the slimy naked body on the floor. ‘The AI designated “Bob” has yet to be uploaded.’
‘She’s right,’ said Maddy. ‘It’s not our old buddy yet. Just a meat combat unit.’
‘Og gub ber smuh,’ gurgled the clone in agreement.
‘And just as moronic as he was last time,’ she added. ‘Come on, let’s get him cleaned up and dressed, then we can get the software upload started.’
Liam placed a hand under one bulging arm, Becks the other and together they helped him to his feet. Liam winked at the bewildered-looking giant. ‘Welcome back, Bob.’
Half an hour later, hosed down and no longer stinking like a pile of rotten meat, dried and dressed in a mix-and-match collection of oversized clothes, Bob sat motionless on Liam’s bunk. His eyelids flickered rapidly as terabytes of data filled the empty silicon wafer embedded in his skull. Becks was overseeing the software transfer process while Maddy had called the other two to join her around the kitchen table.
‘So you see … we’ve got to at least go and take a look. Make sure this Voynich Manuscript isn’t going to totally give the game away.’ She shrugged. ‘It isn’t going to be a particularly secret agency much longer if one of our teams is blabbing away all our secrets in that document. Right?’
Liam nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘Does that mean Liam might meet another “operative” like himself?’ asked Sal.
Maddy shrugged. ‘It’s entirely possible he’ll make contact.’ She turned to him. ‘And, if you do, then obviously the most important thing you need to communicate is that they can’t use the Voynich Manuscript any longer. It’s been compromised, OK?’
‘Right.’
‘So …’ Maddy consulted a pad of paper on the table. ‘So the time we’re sending you back to, Liam, is 1194 — that’s when this Adam Lewis said the document carbon dates to.’ She looked up from her notes. ‘I don’t think carbon dating can be that precise … but it’s a specific year to aim for. And we’re sending you to a place called Kirklees. That’s in England.’
‘Ahh now, I’ve been to England before. With me uncle and me dad, so.’
‘A place called Kirklees Priory. I did a search on it. It’s famous because it’s the place where Robin Hood died and was buried. Supposedly.’
Liam’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Robin Hood, did you say?’
Maddy laughed at his response. ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Liam. From what I’ve pulled up, there seems to be a lot of evidence that Hood’s just a myth: a story made up from a whole bunch of different sources. From old Saxon-aged myths to, like, seventeenth-century highwayman stories.’
‘Oh.’ His face dropped. ‘And there was me hoping to become one of his Merry Men.’
‘Sorry. Now, listen closely. Historical records show this is a dangerous time. The king of England is Richard and he’s abroad fighting some crusade. At home, there’s a lot of unrest and stuff — bandits, anarchy, that kind of thing. So for safety I’m going to send both support units along with you, OK?’
Liam smiled. ‘I’ll be fine, then. Me own little army.’
‘And, remember, all this is a quick look-see. If you can, I want you to find who or what “Cabot” is, and talk to him. See if you can find out who’s writing this Voynich Manuscript, and if it’s another team like us then you’ve got to make contact and warn them that the code’s been broken, right?’
‘Aye.’
‘A secondary objective, Liam — if you can locate the manuscript, or come across whoever’s wr
iting it — is … if you can, find out how to decode that manuscript so we can see what else is in it.’ She glanced at both of them. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being totally in the dark about this agency. I want to know more, and if there’s more we can find out …’
‘Yeah,’ said Sal. ‘I want to know too.’
The three of them were quiet for a moment.
‘I don’t know where this is taking us,’ said Maddy. ‘History has been changed a little. There’s a movie out there that wasn’t there yesterday. And maybe that’s all that’s going to happen with this time wave and we don’t need to correct things again. As Foster once said, history can tolerate some change. Maybe this Adam guy got lucky with those couple of sentences, and that’s all anyone is ever going to get out of the manuscript. But I think we have to just take a look. Agree?’
Liam nodded. ‘It’s the time of knights an’ all. I wouldn’t mind seeing some of that.’
‘Cool. So … when Bob’s ready, Sal, I want you, Liam and the two units to go locate some clothing that’ll not attract attention. God knows what they wear then,’ she said, shrugging, ‘potato sacks and sandals, for all I know.’
‘OK. What about you?’
‘I need to put together a data package for Bob and Becks so they’re, you know, up to speed on all the relevant history.’ She looked at her watch. ‘It’s just gone ten. If we say launch time after lunch?’ She nudged Liam. ‘Might as well get some pizza in before you go.’
CHAPTER 15
2001, New York
He was watching the row of archways, not entirely certain which one they’d disappeared into last night. He’d let them get too far ahead, they’d turned into that backstreet and, by the time he’d arrived and looked down past the wheelie bins and bags of festering rubbish, they were nowhere to be seen.
Nerves had got the better of him; he’d allowed himself to fall too far behind.
He could have gone down there, knocking on each shutter door, but he’d wimped out. Back at his apartment in the early hours, unable to sleep as New York finally stilled itself for a new Monday morning, he’d paced his living room angry with himself. Seven years of waiting for this moment; seven years waiting to talk to the girl again — and he’d wimped out and lost them down this street.
