George and the Ship of Time

by Lucy Hawking

  “I’m not getting out,” Hero stated with considerable determination. “I’m meant to go to Wonder Academy, where everything is shiny and nice, and all my friends live in pods and learn about cool stuff.”

  But the bus had other ideas. “This automated transport will self-destruct in thirty seconds,” came an announcement. “Evacuate this vehicle immediately. Repeat: it will self-destruct in thirty seconds. Any humanoid or robotic life forms must disembark.”

  Hero turned white.

  “Move, Hero!” said George, undoing her seat belt. “Bring your backpack. We have to go!”

  But Hero couldn’t seem to budge.

  “You can’t stay on the bus—it’s going to explode in about twenty seconds.”

  “Nineteen,” said the automated voice.

  George tried to pick Hero up but she was too heavy for him. He looked about wildly. He had to get her out but he couldn’t stay on the bus and wait for it to detonate or activate whatever self-destruct mechanisms it had installed. He was just wondering if he could throw himself out of the bus, and somehow manage to drag Hero with him, when Boltzmann decided it was up to him to do something.

  Calmly the huge robot picked Hero up in his long metal arms, clasped her firmly to stop her thrashing, and got out of the vehicle. Boltzmann sank a few centimetres into the gloopy mud outside the bus—which was already seeping up the sides. But he and Hero were out.

  “Come on, George!” said Boltzmann, still holding firmly onto Hero. George didn’t hesitate; gathering up the two backpacks that Nimu had given them, he threw himself out of the bus, landing on his bottom with a splash on a weedy patch of ground that seemed a little more solid than the rest. He tried to move away from the bus, which he expected to explode with a great bang. But instead it seemed to dissolve, as though it was being pulled apart, atom by atom. After a few seconds, nothing remained where once it had stood. It was as though it had just vanished.

  “Wow!” said George, lying on the ground. “How did that happen?”

  “The ultimate in biodegradable materials?” hazarded Boltzmann. “Or perhaps it atomized itself?”

  The old robot put Hero gently down on a patch of grassy, solid ground next to George. She immediately sat up, her back poker-straight and a shocked, confused expression on her face.

  “What is going on? We should be at Wonder by now!” she said.

  George decided it still wasn’t a good time to break it to her that they were never going to Wonder Academy, that he didn’t know where it was, and, even if he did, he had been expressly told to take Hero somewhere else. He hoped Boltzmann had a fallback plan.

  “Where now, Boltz?” he asked, scrambling to his feet. He opened one of the backpacks and brought out the water purifier. Filling the top half with dank, stinky liquid from a huge puddle, he was amazed to see crystal-clear water drip into the bottom part. “It works!” he said, taking a swig. He got out the second purifier, filled it, and offered it to Hero.

  “Ummm,” said the robot, who had taken some time to scan the thick, wet mist surrounding them. “That way!” He pointed.

  George looked in that direction but could see nothing at all, thanks to the fog. “Why that way?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry,” said the robot comfortingly. “I know exactly what I’m doing. Empyrean gave me all the information we need. I am the ultimate resource. You can depend on me to get you all the way to your destination.”

  “But this isn’t part of Empyrean’s plan, is it?” said George. “We’ve been brought down by a freak weather event.”

  “Not so freak,” said Boltzmann. “The impact of climate change”—Hero snorted—“means the weather is entirely out of control. I’m thanking my robot stars we landed in the forest and not in a flash flood from the downpour! Water is no friend to the helpful robot going about his personsupporting chores!”

  “Can you call Empy and check what we should do now?”

  Boltzmann looked uneasy. “Empyrean asked me only to get in touch in an absolute emergency. Otherwise we reveal our location. I do not think this is in fact an emergency, just a blip.”

  “How would you call Empy?” George asked. He broke open a few freeze-dried trail bars, gave one to Hero, and munched on the other himself.

  “Like this.” Boltzmann seemed to speak into his palm. “Empyrean,” he mimed. “The eagle has landed.” He chuckled and snapped his palm shut, smiling at George and Hero. It struck George that Boltzmann appeared to be enjoying himself.

  “What were you speaking into?” asked Hero. George was relieved that she seemed to have come around.

  “It’s called a Digitizer,” said Boltzmann. He showed them a device about the size of an iPhone attached to his palm. It fit neatly into his large robot hand. “Empyrean gave it to me. It will plan our route and allow us to communicate with him if we need to. But please trust me! I will not let you down. This,” he confided, “is the sort of mission I have been longing for. The chance to be a really useful robot.”

  “Can that thingy show you the way to anywhere you want to go?” asked Hero quietly, picking at her energy snack.

  “Affirmative!” The nice robot beamed. “It has already plotted a new path for us to cross the Swamp in the direction of Edenopolis, capital city of Eden.”

  “Good!” said George. Perhaps Boltzmann was right and this wasn’t actually a total disaster after all. He had a map from Nimu too, he remembered. He reached into his back pocket . . . but pulled out only a soaked, muddy piece of paper that disintegrated in his hand.

  Boltzmann smiled at him. “Paper can only do so much, George,” he said. “Modern technology is so much more resilient.” He waved his hand again.

  “Edenopolis!” said Hero in delight. “Wowee! It’s such a cool place. It’s made of glass and gold and it floats on the clouds! It’s the most beautiful city in the world.”

  George wondered how many cities there were in the world now, and whether being the most beautiful really meant anything anymore.

  “From there,” continued Boltzmann, “we will get our next transport. But we have to be very careful—Edenopolis is beautiful but very dangerous. There are spies everywhere.”

  Spies, thought George, staring into the darkening gloom. Why didn’t that surprise him? How else would Eden be run? “Let’s go.”

  “I’ll carry Hero,” said Boltzmann, wanting as ever to be helpful.

  “You will not!” said Hero. She jumped to her feet. “I can walk!”

  “Follow me,” said the robot. “And stay close.” He switched on the lights in his pincer fingers, which allowed them to see a little farther. In the white light, which turned smoky and opaque as it tried to pierce the fog, they could just make out that they were in a forest clearing.

  As Boltzmann pointed his lights upward, they saw towering trees dripping with rain and covered in thick moss. The branches of the trees were curved and wavy, bending in fantastical shapes as they seemed to weave a canopy above their heads. Below the trees sprouted another layer of dense undergrowth, with thickets of fronded ferns and twisted ropes of creeper. Each tree had hundreds of thick, dark leaves. A faint perfume rose from this strange forest, sweet, earthy, and fruity.

  “Those are fig trees!” said George, who was good at botany. His father, back in the past, had loved gardening above all things, and from him George had learned more than he had realized. He could see ripe fruits hanging under the enormous leaves.

  “What’s a fig?” asked Hero, reaching her hand out to touch the tree and then pulling it back the moment she made contact. She wiped her hand fastidiously on her jumpsuit, leaving a dark green smear.

  “Try one,” said George, who had grown up with parents who were foragers. He snapped off a juicy dark fig and handed it to Hero. She wrinkled her nose. George picked another one for himself and bit into it. “It’s delicious,” he said. “Go on, try it.”

  Hero took the tiniest of nibbles. She screwed up her face, but then she felt the sweetness on her tongue
. “Oh!” she said in surprise. “It’s lovely!” George wondered if she had ever eaten real food before, or only powders, pills, mixes, and freeze-dried high-energy snacks.

  “The fig is a prehistoric plant  that grows vigorously in many different environments,” said Boltzmann, who was checking the general-knowledge files Empyrean had given him. “It can conquer spaces that previously might have been inhabited, as the strong roots of the tree will push through substances as solid as concrete.”

  “What’s concrete?” Hero said.

  George looked around. Here and there were angular shapes, which might be the remnants of buildings. As Boltzmann shone his light around them, George thought he could make out silhouettes of ghost buildings, intertwined with the vigorous fig.

  “Do you think the figs took over a city?” George asked. He’d been to see ruined cities from the distant past with his parents, the remains of ancient civilizations. It was mind-bending to think that the cities he had known on Earth could now lie in ruins themselves.

  “Yes,” said Boltzmann. “I believe this was once a great city in the north of your country.”

  “Do you know what it was called?” asked George.

  “Manchester?” said Boltzmann. “Is that a place you know?”

  “It was,” said George sadly. “Not anymore. At least there are still trees in the future,” he went on, trying to focus on something positive. “But how are we going to get through? There are no paths.”

  “If you will allow me,” said Boltzmann, “I would like to be as helpful as my programming is capable of!” Ripping and tearing plants out by their roots, he powered ahead, creating a route for Hero and George to follow.

  “Are there predators in the figgy forest?” George asked Boltzmann nervously as they trudged along. He looked about uneasily. Now that they were among the trees, strange echoing noises bounced around them in the fog. It was impossible to know where they came from, or what they were. Sometimes they sounded like parrots squawking; sometimes they were like metallic drills or weird ghostly whispers, right next to George’s ear. At times, they thought they heard a distant roar.

  “I spotted a leopard in the mountains,” said Boltzmann, pounding forward as Hero tiptoed along behind. “So not all big cats are extinct. And I believe Empyrean may have also referred me to some experiments with DNA . . .”

  At that moment, George heard what sounded like a throaty purr, just to the left of him. As he tried to focus in on the noise, he made out padded footsteps, which seemed to keep pace with him. He slowed down—and they seemed to slow. He sped up, bashing into the back of Hero as he accelerated, and the footsteps got faster too. But then they stopped, and the forest itself returned to silence again, the only noises being Boltzmann hacking at the undergrowth, Hero humming, and George’s rapid breathing. All the other noises had faded away, as though something so big and so scary was afoot in the forest that evening that none wanted to give away their location by making a sound.

  “Something is following us,” he tried to whisper to the two in front, but Boltzmann was too busy thrashing out a path and Hero was too intent on keeping up with Boltzmann to hear him. But what came next was so loud that it must have been heard by all the creatures of the forest.

  A bloodcurdling snarl. It came out of the fog—the sort of noise that George had never heard before but which his primal instincts told him was the sound of a predator that had scented its prey. Boltzmann immediately stopped and wheeled around, pushing Hero behind him. She opened her mouth to scream but no sound came out. It wouldn’t have mattered, thought George, if it had. The noise came again, this time so loud that it drowned out everything else, followed by what sounded to George like a large animal licking its chops in anticipation of a meal.

  “Where is it?” said George, terror running through his veins. “And what is it?”

  He and Boltzmann turned together in a full circle around Hero, with Boltzmann shining his lights into the dimness, looking for the beast that stalked them. They heard the ground being pawed, and another snarl, as suddenly a huge striped beast with long yellow fangs threw itself out of the darkness toward them.

  Boltzmann stepped neatly forward, shielding George, and took the whole force of the impact. Hero and George dived aside as Boltzmann fell backward, the tiger on top of him. George felt as though he was frozen to the spot, watching the tiger trying to tear into Boltzmann’s metal body. For a few moments, the robot and the tiger fought on the ground, the beast driven mad by its attempts to bite into the metal. Boltzmann’s arms closed around the tiger, just as they had done around Hero earlier—but the tiger was a far more fearsome opponent than the small girl had been. George tried to think: what were you supposed to do if a tiger attacked? But his brain felt as stuck as his body. All he could think of was the tiger that came to tea—and this tiger wasn’t one that anyone would invite in for a cuppa and a toasted muffin. It looked more like a . . . sabre-toothed tiger! But they had been extinct for centuries! How could . . . ?

  Beside George, Hero watched in wide-eyed horror as the beast gnawed at their robot guide. But suddenly she sprang forward and launched herself at the back of the animal, slapping it with her small hands and shouting, “Get off, you big bully! Leave Boltzmann alone!” George realized that she had no idea of the scale of the danger she was in. He leaped forward and grabbed her, throwing her to one side, and instead tried to climb onto the oily fur of the huge tiger to see if he could somehow pull it off Boltzmann. His hands slipped on the coat of the magnificent beast, but somehow he managed to clamber aboard and get his arms around its throat.

  But, as he did so, the noises from the tiger changed. It was getting tired of gnawing at the unbending flesh of its victim. Boltzmann was not proving the tasty catch it had hoped for. Now it was fighting to get away, using its massive strength and body weight to pull out of the robot’s grasp. Boltzmann’s metal body had been through a lot by now. Weakened by the long journey through space without any form of repair or rest, his arms were fatigued and couldn’t maintain their grip on the slippery fur of the angry tiger. With an enormous roar and a great scream of breaking metal, the tiger broke free, with George still clinging onto its back as though he was in a rodeo and the tiger was a bucking bronco. It turned its huge face toward Hero and paused, licking its fleshy lips as it smelled the air. George could feel the beast registering that Hero would make a delicious dinner. He tried to tighten his grip, his hands in the soft fur under the tiger’s chin, his arms brushed by the long whiskers of the huge cat. As it licked its lips, some warm tiger saliva flicked onto George’s hands.

  George felt time slow down as he peered over between the animal’s upright ears, taking in the slanted amber eyes, the long curved teeth, the matted orange fur, and the white whiskers. It crouched back on its hind paws, getting ready to spring toward Hero, who just stood there, her face a blurred oval against the darkness of the forest.

  “I’m so sorry,” George said out loud, not knowing quite to whom. To Hero, perhaps, for not being able to save her. To his family for leaving them behind when he flew off in a spaceship. But most of all to his best friend, Annie, whom he had also left behind all those years ago, when he launched himself into space with just a robot for company. “I’m sorry,” he repeated as the tiger let out one last, spine-tingling howl and readied itself to leap . . .

  Chapter Twelve

  George threw himself off the upright beast, hoping to land in front of it so that at least it would be distracted long enough for Hero to get away. He fell onto his back on the muddy, slimy forest floor. Sensing the commotion, the tiger landed softly on its front paws, turned, and smiled sleepily at George—the patronizing smirk of the most powerful predator in the jungle. Sure of the outcome, the tiger moved slowly, almost lazily, as if it was smugly enjoying its victory.

  Had George not delayed the tiger, and had it jumped a moment sooner, it might have reached one of its victims before Boltzmann recovered a flicker of energy in his battered circuits
. Fortunately George had bought them just enough time. As the tiger bent its head toward him, licking its lips and baring its teeth, a tiny dart flew out of the end of Boltzmann’s finger and landed in the beast, which gave a mighty roar before keeling over. It was close enough for George to feel the heat of its breath and see the rows of sharp incisor teeth in its powerful jaws.

  The howl that came was of shock, not victory. Whatever the dart contained, it was strong enough to knock the tiger unconscious. It was as though it had stalled mid-leap, front paws extended, mouth gaping open, eyes rolling—and then careered sideways with a great crashing sound as its mighty weight plummeted down through layers of vegetation to the forest floor, where it hit the remains of a paved road. Just underneath its magnificent head, the jaws still open, were the traces of long-forgotten road traffic markings.

  As a shocked George gazed down at the huge mammal, he could see that it was lying on top of a NO PARKING sign. For a nanosecond, his mind whirred back to imagine what this place must have been like as a city in his time—cars, people, buildings, bustle, kids, shops, and schools.

  A metallic wheeze and a human whimper brought George back to the here and now. He looked up at Hero, who was still standing like a wax statue with one extended finger pointing at the beast as she dumbly mouthed something unintelligible. She sat down heavily as George went over to her. She seemed to have gone to a place beyond speech. Shaking her head, she curled up into a ball and fell into the deep sleep of the very shocked.

  George checked that she was as okay as she could be, given the circumstances, and turned back to Boltzmann. The old robot had just saved both their lives but had paid a very heavy price for his courage. “You’re alive!”

  “No,” rasped Boltzmann, who was lying on the ground in a nest of fallen fig leaves, bits of shredded metal scattered around him like a halo. “Was never alive. Am nothing but a machine.”