by Alex Scarrow
She watched the village slowly recede behind them, a muddy bank lined with smiling faces, waving hands, voices calling after them and wishing them well, and for a moment her heart felt heavy leaving them behind.
‘They were really friendly to us strangers.’
Adam nodded. ‘God knows they’ve got reason not to be.’
‘Did none of them recognize you from your last visit? When was it … two years ago?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ Adam shook his head. ‘Mind you, I looked completely different. My hair was all short back-’n’-sides. I was clean shaven like a preppy.’ He shrugged. ‘I probably looked like a bit of a trainspotter.’
‘Trainspotter?’
‘A dork. A pencil-neck. A complete nerd.’
She nodded. ‘Oh, OK. I think I can see that.’
He smiled sarcastically. ‘Thanks.’
The sedate flow of the river carried them round a long bend and finally the village was lost from sight, the voices faded and the sound of the jungle once more filled the humid air and descended upon them like a blanket of thick felt.
Chapter 19
1994, Río Coco
An hour later they approached the low muddy flats of a river delta. Adam scanned the jungle to their right for a discernible break indicating the entry point of the Green River. ‘Hmmm,’ he grunted, ‘it’s not exactly how I remembered it.’
Adam cast his mind back. Two years ago the gap in the jungle horizon on the Nicaraguan side of the river had been distinct and unambiguous. Since then it seemed loggers had paid a visit here and the river junction now looked entirely different: acres of mud dotted with the flat tops of shorn tree stumps. He steered the canoe over towards the muddy expanse, looking for the distinct thread of green-hued water merging into the coffee brown of the Coco.
‘Not lost, are we?’ Liam called from the other canoe.
‘It’s all different,’ he replied. ‘Give me a moment, I’ll get my bearings.’
The tributary was small, much more than a stream, for sure, but not quite deserving of the term ‘river’. And he recalled several other narrow rivers like it had fed into the Coco round about here. One of the young Zambu men pointed out across the flats.
Billy translated. ‘He say … big rains last season. Change this very much.’
Two years ago three small branching tributaries had converged as they joined the Coco; the Green River had been the middle one. Now they all seemed to wind their own independent curving paths through the mud. Adam had no idea into which inlet to steer the canoes.
The young man pointed the way with his fishing spear.
‘He say … that one.’
‘Is he sure?’ asked Maddy.
Billy sighed. ‘This where they fish. He knows.’
Adam steered their canoes into a shallow inlet; the current was lazy and uncertain. They eased their way along a narrow channel so shallow that at times the bottom of the canoe hissed as it slid over the muddy bed, the note of the outboard engine changing in complaint as the propeller chopped through glutinous water as thick as milkshake.
Ten minutes later the mud banks were behind them; the jungle had crept back towards them and now flanked the river’s edge. The broad fronds of guanacaste trees cast shadows over them, their drooping branches reaching out across the twenty-foot-wide river like grasping arms, almost reaching each other.
‘This is it,’ said Adam. ‘I remember it being like this.’
The canoes puttered slowly up the tributary, one towed by the other, meandering in an endless languid zigzag, following the river’s convoluted route, bend after bend. The water became green, just as Adam had said it would, thick with algae on the surface. With each turn in the river, it seemed to subtly narrow, the overhanging canopies of leaves and branches above them almost completely merging into one.
Midday, on cue, the blue sky seemed to vanish behind a veil of heavy grey clouds and within a few minutes the heavens opened up as if some divine tap had been spun open. Rain speared down on them sharply, drumming noisily on the stretched-hide hulls of the canoes. The river water dashed and danced; the jungle hissed and roared so loudly with the patter of millions of heavy raindrops on millions of leaves. They had to shout to hear each other. Adam pulled a large plastic cagoule out of his backpack and put it on. The young Zambu steering the lead canoe aimed them to one side, affording them at least some shelter from the relentless downpour.
Liam shivered miserably as he watched the rain. ‘Who turned the cold tap on? I thought these jungle rainstorms were supposed to be warm like a bath.’
Bob turned to look at him. ‘You are cold, Liam?’
‘Bleedin’ freezing!’
The support unit looked around for something to drape over him. He found nothing, so he wrapped one enormous arm round Liam’s narrow shoulders.
‘Ahhh, that’s better, fella,’ replied Liam, snuggling up to his body warmth.
‘Sheeesh!’ Maddy, sitting in the next canoe, pushed a sopping wet coil of hair out of her eyes. ‘Hey! You two lovebirds want to go get a room or something?’
‘Uh?’ Liam stirred drowsily and looked over at her. She pursed her lips and made a kissy-kissy face.
‘What? No!’ Liam lurched out of Bob’s tender embrace. ‘Jay-zus! Come on! I was just cold! I was just –!’
Bob’s brow locked with a considered frown. ‘Information: she is making a joke.’ He raised his meaty arm and beckoned at Liam to come back and snuggle with him. ‘I will keep you warm, Liam.’
‘Errr … no, that’s … no, I’m fine right here, Bob.’
Maddy cackled drily.
Adam was sitting beside her. ‘What is it?’
‘Sheeesh … I’m the only girl h-here,’ she stuttered through chattering teeth, ‘and it’s Liam who g-gets the one frikkin’ chivalrous gesture.’
He pursed his lips thoughtfully for a moment before raising his arm awkwardly. ‘Do you want to …?’
She nodded. ‘Yeah … go on then, why not?’
Adam unzipped his plastic cagoule, pulled his arm out of the sleeve and shuffled up beside her, until their hips bumped. He wrapped it round her trembling shoulders. He zipped up his jacket again – zipping them in together. Then, uncertainly, he placed his arm round her waist. ‘That … errr … that any better?’
She could feel the tendons and muscles in his arms flexing ever so slightly. Not just the dead weight of an arm at rest round her but something akin to a hug going on there. She could feel his cheek rest against the top of her head.
‘This … this OK?’
She wanted to say it was actually somewhat more than OK. Wanted to turn her face up towards him – the subtlest of movements and the tip of her nose might just be touching his. They’d be close enough to feel the warmth of each other’s breath on their cheeks. Another tiny movement, the slightest lean-in and they’d be …
Instead she merely nodded. ‘Yeah. Better, thanks.’
Then she found herself wondering if one day she was going to regret not making a simple turn of her head.
Chapter 20
1889, London
What are we? Are we the problem? Or are we the solution? It was all so much simpler when we trusted Foster, when we trusted Waldstein’s reason for setting up this whole thing. It made sense at the beginning. Keep history straight and true, otherwise … well, we’ve witnessed what ‘otherwise’ can be. But now Maddy’s questioning it. All of it.
Sal looked up from her notebook at a cart laden with boxes of groceries rattling past her. Farringdon Street was busy, as it always was this time in the morning: traders setting up for the day, carts and wagons with goods heading to and fro, hansom cabs taking well-dressed gentlemen to their oh-so-important social engagements.
There was order here. Sitting out on the step, looking at a straightforward world of noises and smells, people hurrying on their way to jobs, or wearily walking home from long night shifts, things made sense. A clockwork world, of commerce, grit, gr
ease and grime. A hard world, admittedly, but a reassuringly predictable world.
Back inside, in the dark, in the dungeon, things became complicated and unsure again. There were no certainties. Nothing could be taken as read. The future was as fluid and random as … they chose to make it.
That scared her. It felt like too much power, too much responsibility in their hands alone – in Maddy’s hands alone, to be truthful.
I think we just have to trust Waldstein. I think he knows something we don’t. I think only he has the Big Picture. We’re just guessing at everything. And who knows what kind of a mess we could make of things.
She paused, her pen – her modern biro, just another example of how careless they were all becoming – poised above the paper. The world as it stood had a lifespan that was going to take it to the year 2070. No, not the world – mankind. The world, this planet, was going to carry on just fine without mankind around.
Sal pondered the years ahead.
So mankind has 181 years left from now. And Saleena Vikram, she’ll be 65 when the end finally comes in 2070.
It wasn’t a bad age to live to. A full-ish life. She nodded thoughtfully. That was her goal. To ensure that the young girl she’d glimpsed – the young girl she was ‘copied from’, that girl so full of life and hope and love for her father – got to live that life of hers. In the end, of the two of them, that girl’s life was the one that counted.
‘Penny for your thoughts, Miss Vikram?’
Sal turned round, jerked from her musings, and looked into the gloom of the viaduct’s labyrinthine interior. Bertie was standing there, his head cocked curiously. ‘I thought you might like a mug of coffee. And one of these …’ He held out a paper napkin wrapped round something. ‘Exceedingly tasty. Malt cakes.’
He stooped down beside her, looking curiously over her shoulder at the notebook. Sal snapped it shut. ‘Just some silly poems,’ she said quickly.
Bertie placed a warm mug in her hands.
‘Thank you,’ she replied. ‘That’s very kind.’
‘Well!’ Bertie puffed out his breath. A cloud curled in the air. ‘It is rather chilly this morning.’
Sal looked down at the napkin bundle in his hand. She could sense it was something tasty; it smelled freshly baked and yeasty, and she realized how hungry she was this morning.
‘That smells really good.’
Chapter 21
1994, Green River, Nicaragua
Liam stamped down hard on the rotten branch. It snapped like balsa wood with a loud crack. He bent down and picked up both halves and handed them to Bob to tuck into the bundle of firewood he was holding under one arm.
‘… you know, I thought I was getting like you,’ he continued. ‘Thought I was beginning to think a bit like you.’
Bob looked at him. ‘I do not understand.’
‘All analytical, just like a computer. You know what I mean? Making judgements based on scores and variables and the like.’
Bob nodded. ‘I understand. But your thinking process is far more advanced than mine.’
Liam cocked a brow. ‘You’re joking me, right?’
‘Negative. The human mind is more adaptable and far more sophisticated. It is able to make leaps of intuition that a digital mind is incapable of doing.’
‘Oh, come on, Bob, your computer does billions of clever things every second.’
‘I can process 156 million calculations per second. But none of those calculations are, as you say, “clever”. I find it difficult, for example, to tell you how I feel.’
‘Difficult, you just said –’ Liam looked up at him – ‘but not impossible?’
Bob nodded. ‘It requires the full resources of my AI, but …’ He paused for a while to reflect on that. ‘But I am able to construct only a basic simulation of an emotion. My AI has exceeded its performance expectations in this regard.’
‘You’ve definitely become something more than a dumb bot.’ Liam smiled. ‘My baby boy’s all grown up now.’
Bob scowled. ‘That is a joke?’
‘Aye. Well … sort of.’
Liam scooped up another branch of dead wood and handed it to the support unit. They gathered kindling in silence for a while before Bob finally spoke again.
‘Your joke, Liam, is a valid metaphor for the state of my heightened AI functionality.’
‘Uh?’
‘I have grown up.’
Liam hesitated mid-stoop. Was there the ghost of a tone in his voice? A hint of the rebellious child challenging its parent? ‘Well … that’s good, Bob. That’s very good.’
‘I have been able to revise my mission parameters on several occasions. I have been able to assign my own mission objectives.’
Liam nodded. ‘And we’re all very proud of you, so we are.’ He handed the support unit another branch. ‘I wonder now …’ Liam started, but then paused for thought.
Bob cocked his head, waiting for Liam to finish. ‘You wonder what?’
‘Well, I wonder if there’ll come a time one day, when you’ll break yer programmin’ rules and disagree with a direct order? Hmm? Decide me or Maddy’s wrong about something and just say “no” to us?’
Bob’s eyes narrowed slightly. ‘I am already able to do this. I have been able to for some time.’
‘Really? You could really do that? Just say no to us?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘And yet … yet, you’ve never disobeyed me or Maddy, or Sal? Why’s that? There must’ve been times we’ve told you to do something you thought was wrong … or just plain foolish?’
Bob smiled crudely. ‘I have faith in your judgement.’
‘Really?’ Liam shook his head and bent down to pick up another fallen branch. ‘Maybe you’re not that smart after all then.’
‘I have faith in your judgement, because it works on a higher cognitive level. You would call it instinct.’
‘Guesswork, more like.’
‘Your “guesswork”, Liam, resulted in you managing to outmanoeuvre six support units of an identical production batch to myself. To date it has served you well. I repeat my earlier statement – I trust your judgement.’
‘Right.’ Liam handed him the branch.
‘I no longer follow your orders because a line of code dictates I must. I follow your orders because I choose to.’
Liam looked sceptically at him. He was about to say something about the folly of the blind leading the blind when a solitary loud crack echoed through the jungle.
‘What was that?’
They heard another one. ‘Jay-zus … Was that a gun firing?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Perhaps that was Billy hunting something?’ suggested Liam hopefully.
Bob shook his head. ‘The signatures of those two shots do not match his weapon type.’ He looked at Liam. ‘They came from a different gun.’
Liam led the charge, heading back the way they’d come, down a gentle incline through low-hanging vines that whipped painfully at his cheeks and thick undergrowth that threatened to tangle his legs at any moment. He led them down towards the river. He finally caught sight of the lime-green skin of algae covering the river water through the trees ahead.
Jay-zus … how far did we wander?
He stumbled out of the undergrowth and emerged into sunlight. He looked upriver. There in the distance, as the river – smooth, green and flat like a velvet carpet pathway – curved round to the left, he could see their two canoes pulled up on a muddy bank and the grey plume of smoke of their campfire meandering up into a clear sky.
But no sign of Maddy or Adam or either of the two young Zambu with them.
‘Something’s not right!’ he called back to Bob.
The support unit staggered clumsily out of the jungle behind him and together they raced along the riverbank, splashing through shallow pools, ducking beneath low boughs and hopping over gnarled tree roots that curled like arthritic clawed fists reaching for the river.
Closer
now, just a hundred yards upriver from them, he caught a glimpse of Adam’s one-man orange nylon tent, but, as yet, no sign of anyone moving around. Liam ducked under one last low-hanging guanacaste branch and then raced up the rounded flat of mud that marked an ox-bow bend in this lazy tributary.
Ahead was their camp, the canoes, their three tents, their campfire – now burned down to little more than a collapsed pyre of charcoaled branches and ash – and beside it the clothes were still hanging from a loose frame of sticks lashed together, hung close to the fire to dry out from today’s earlier torrential rain.
But what he saw next stopped him in his tracks. Lying beside the smouldering mound of ashes were the bodies of both the young Zambu men. Quite dead and lying side by side like a display of some proud fisherman’s daily catch.
Bob drew up beside him. Then hastily hurried forward, squatted down beside the corpses and quickly inspected them.
‘They are both dead, Liam. A shot to the back of their heads.’
Just like an execution.
‘Oh, God … what the hell just happ–’
A high-pitched voice called out. Liam looked up and saw Billy emerging from the jungle beyond the protruding mud bank. His AK47 was in his hands, cocked and ready to fire.
For a moment Liam had a horrible thought. A thought that made him feel almost nauseous. Their guide had turned on them. Billy had decided that here and now was as good a time as any to turn on his clients, kill them and pocket that fat roll of American dollar bills he must have seen Maddy pull out of her bag several times already.
But, as Billy drew closer, Liam realized he’d judged the man unfairly. Their guide looked ashen, shaken. Not the ice-calm face of a murderer getting ready to finish off an unpleasant but necessary job.
