by Alex Scarrow
‘But we’re going to learn more, I promise you. We’ll learn more from this Voynich Manuscript … we’ll find out what Pandora is, what it means. We’ll find out what the warning is. And when we know more than we do …’ She smiled. ‘I dunno, maybe one day we can make a choice of our own, you know?’
Sal nodded her head ever so slightly.
‘Until then –’ she fiddled with her glasses – ‘until then … all we know is what’s meant to be, and what isn’t. And this sure as hell isn’t.’
Sal tipped her head at the monitor behind Maddy. ‘I think Bob agrees with you.’
Maddy turned to see the blinking cursor at the end of a message.
> Recommendation: mission priority has changed. History contamination needs correcting.
‘Yup, Bob, you’re right. I think we need to get a message back to Liam.’
CHAPTER 41
1194, Oxford Castle, Oxford
‘If we successfully complete the mission, Liam O’Connor, and we return to the field office, 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”.’
Becks played the memory back in her head; a conversation between her and Liam as they walked along a prehistoric beach and watched distant brachiosauri grazing on an open plain. She knew the only reason she existed as a separate entity in her own right was because Sal had carelessly activated a female embryo from stasis instead of a male one.
She was an error.
‘Why would we want to go and do that, Becks?’
‘The male support frame is eighty-seven per cent more effective than the female frame as a combat unit.’
‘Well now, I really 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?’
‘Negative. I am not aware of any agency rules on that.’
‘So, well, there you are … why not? We’ll have two of you instead of one.’
The ‘memory’ now nothing more than a compressed low-resolution media clip to allow for more efficient data storage on her hard drive. The image pixellated, the audio flat and tinny. But there was another data file that had been created in that moment: a file that recorded the neuron response in the one small part of her mind that was organic. A file she had no meaningful name for yet – just a useful categorization ident: EmoteResponse-57739929.
‘Have I functioned as efficiently as the Bob unit?’
‘Yes, of course. I don’t know what we’d have done without you so far, Becks.’
The file was a recording of how her mind had reacted in that moment, several thousand synapses in her simple animal mind firing off minute electrical impulses. Perhaps the closest she’d ever come to a genuine emotional response.
As she stared out in perfect stillness and silence at Oxford below – a medieval town in slumber, lit only by the faint and occasional stab of moonlight – she analysed the file, unpacked the data and pored through it, wondering what human emotion the data file EmoteResponse-57739929 most closely approximated.
[Gratitude?]
No, not that. It seemed more than that. Not just a response to a sentence of praise … there was something else. Another factor involved. She ran the figures in her head, played the data on a digital simulation of her organic mind to try and replay that fleeting moment of ‘emotion’.
More than gratitude. It was the recognition of her worth. She amounted to more than an error now.
But that wasn’t it. There remained numbers in the file that were unaccounted for.
She replayed the file, the moment, the memory again and her perfectly still face flickered ever so slightly in response. A hand muscle twitched. This time around she understood the relevant factor. It wasn’t just that her contribution had been praised. It wasn’t that she’d just heard she was going to be allowed to carry on functioning as a support unit after they returned. It was the fact that a particular person had said that to her.
[Liam O’Connor]
In the darkness of her chamber, as a fresh breeze played with the drapes either side of her small window, she slowly cocked her head, unsure what that conclusion meant.
Further processing was halted. She heard the creak of the door to her room and silently turned to observe it easing open and the dark silhouette of a figure step lightly into the room.
The figure crossed the stone floor, with the light tap of leather soles on stone. ‘Lady Rebecca?’ She recognized the soft singsong voice as John’s. ‘’Tis I … do you sleep?’
He wandered over to the bed and started patting the mattress. ‘Lady Rebecca?’
‘I am here!’ Becks replied.
She saw John’s outline lurch in surprise. ‘Good Lord!’ he gasped in the dark. She saw the outline of his head turn one way then the other, then finally settle on her standing beside the window. ‘There you are! Can you not sleep?’
‘Neg– … no, I do not sleep.’
‘Neither can I,’ he confessed, stepping around the end of the bed towards her. ‘I … My mind races with all manner of things. I am deeply troubled.’
He drew up in front of her. Very close. Closer, she noticed, than humans normally stood when in conversation. ‘My mind … it needs soothing. Distracting from these troubles,’ he whispered softly. ‘And you … you, Lady Rebecca, I … I find myself drawn to you …’
She felt the soft touch of a hand on her neck.
[Proximity threat]
She reached up and grasped his wrist firmly.
‘Oooh!’ John chuckled. ‘And this is what I find so alluring about you, my dear! You … you are so wilful!’
[Analysis: subject responding favourably to threat response behaviour]
‘I … liked the way …’ She felt John’s breath on her cheek. Fluttering puffs of hot air. ‘I … loved the way you took care of yourself with that soldier, my dear.’
She realized he was referring to her nearly snapping the neck of one of the guards yesterday. ‘You approve?’
He nodded. ‘Oh, yes! Yes! So … so rare is it to find a woman … a woman like you. So … so …’
‘Strong?’
‘Strong … yes! Lord, yes! A woman who can fight back!’
With one graceful movement, she lifted his feet off the ground and flipped him on to his back. He landed on the hard floor with a percussive grunt and she dropped down heavily on to his chest, knocking the wind out of him. She put a hand round his throat, but at the last moment held back from throttling him.
John struggled on the floor, gurgling, his eyes drawn wide and glinting in the fleeting moonlight. ‘Googh G-Goghhh! Urghhhrhbghady … R-Rebeghhaa!’
Her mind processed the shrill tone of his gurgling voice and the accelerated pulse in his neck and determined that she may just have misinterpreted his meaning.
She released her grip on his throat. ‘I apologize, Sire,’ she said.
John stared up at her in silence, his ragged breath filling the air between them. His thick tawny brows seemed to knit together into an intense mono-brow, an expression she wasn’t familiar enough with him yet to understand.
‘Have I angered you?’ she asked finally.
CHAPTER 42
1194, Nottingham Castle, Nottingham
‘Ye understand this is a fool’s errand?’ said Cabot. ‘The king’s forests are thick with the Hooded Man’s followers! And they fight in a way that suits the forests.’
Liam sighed. A night of sleeping on the matter hadn’t helped. In the cold light of the January morning their situation seemed no better. Coils of smoke from last night’s riot snaked up into the tumbling sky, and the subdued town of Nottingham below seemed to glare back at Liam with malevolence.
‘You understand, Mr Cabot, Bob and me aren’t here to play policemen! The sheriff will have to deal with this on his own!’ He turne
d to Bob, sitting on an oak bench beside the window and gazing out at the town. ‘Bob? Tell him!’
‘Mission priority is retrieving the artefact called The Grail,’ he rumbled, his eyes remaining on the rooftops of Nottingham.
‘William De Wendenal is nothing but a wastrel, a drunkard! His men are deserting!’ Cabot shook his head. ‘I had no idea the authority of John was this far gone! I had no idea how bad –’
‘I’m sorry! But we can’t stay here. We have to go find the Grail!’
‘Do ye not understand, Liam? If law and order falls in this country; if chaos reigns … it is an invitation for civil war! The barons will tear this country into pieces for themselves. Worse still, it is an invitation to France to invade, to plunder England. And by God they will, if they catch wind of this!’
‘Maybe … maybe,’ Liam said, rubbing at tired eyes, ‘but that’s a whole other mission, so it is.’ He turned away from the window. ‘We need the men out there patrolling the forests. We need to find this Hood!’
‘Patrolling the forests! There be barely enough soldiers here to hold the castle! And out there – out in the forests, they would be cut down!’
Liam suspected Cabot was right. The few men left in the castle were either frightened old men or even more frightened boys. Getting them to even consider patrolling the town around the castle would be an endeavour beyond him, let alone organizing a systematic sweep of Sherwood Forest.
‘Bob? Any ideas?’
Bob remained perfectly still.
Liam came over and prodded his shoulder. ‘Bob? Hello?’
Cabot’s eyes narrowed. ‘What is the matter with him? He seems entranced.’
Liam could see muscles in Bob’s face twitch, and the slightest flicker of his eyelids. ‘What is it? Are you getting something?’
‘Just a moment,’ replied Bob. ‘Processing.’
‘What is the matter?’ asked Cabot again, rising from the round oak table, still a shambles of piled parchments and scrolls, matters long overdue for the sheriff’s attention.
‘I think … I think we’re getting a signal.’
‘Signal?’
Liam ignored the old monk’s question. He pulled up a stool in front of Bob and sat down. ‘Bob? Tell me what you’ve got.’
‘Decompressing wide-range tachyon signal data packet,’ he replied. ‘Just a moment.’
A new signal from Maddy, that’s what this had to be. He wondered what had happened. Something not good, presumably.
Finally Bob stirred. His gaze returned from the grey sky over Nottingham and settled on Liam. ‘I have a message from Maddy and an attached data package, Liam.’
‘So what’s the message?’
‘Time wave has arrived. Significant contamination event, originating 1194. Mission requirement has changed. Prevent an event known as “Great Peasant Revolt”. See data package attached for further information on event origins. Pandora now a secondary consideration. Please acknowledge.’
‘What’s the data package?’ asked Liam.
Bob blinked several times before he spoke again. ‘The Great Peasant Revolt of 1194 began during the reign of King Richard. His prolonged absence on the Third Crusade left his country bankrupt. With the king abroad, the authority of the crown quickly eroded under the proxy rule of the king’s younger brother, John …’ His monotone voice echoed across the hall for the better part of an hour as he read aloud the compiled dossier.
Cabot was the first to speak when he’d finished. His normally gruff voice shaken and small. ‘And this … these are events that are yet to happen? Just as I was saying to ye – rebellion? Civil war?’
Liam nodded. ‘That’s history that has now happened.’
‘Has happened?’
‘Will happen,’ corrected Liam.
‘But need not happen if – if …?’
‘If I … if we take some sort of action, yes.’ He offered Cabot a smile and an apology. ‘It seems you’re right, Mr Cabot – there are more pressing matters to attend to.’
‘This means ye will …?’
‘It looks like Bob and me need to stay on here.’ He got up and wandered over to the window and leaned against the stone frame. ‘Those riots going on last night … that appears to be the very beginning of this peasant revolt. It all starts here in Nottingham.’
‘Affirmative,’ said Bob. ‘Corrective measures will need to be applied here immediately.’
‘Ye have John’s full authority,’ said Cabot. ‘Ye will use that?’
Liam shrugged. ‘I’d be mad not to.’
‘So … Liam, ye will become the new Sheriff of Nottingham?’
Liam saw that Bob looked unhappy about that. ‘I know, I know … if I make myself sheriff, I’m contaminating history, but it looks like –’
‘Negative,’ Bob interrupted. ‘Contamination level may be acceptable.’
Liam laughed. ‘Oh come on! There was never a Sheriff of Nottingham called Liam O’Connor!’
‘Historical records of this time do not specify a particular name for the Sheriff of Nottingham.’
‘You mean … no one knows who it was?’
‘Correct. This means your name is unlikely to be recorded in history. This is an acceptable contamination risk.’
Cabot joined them by the window. ‘Do I presume from yer exchange that ye can become the sheriff, then?’
Liam nodded. ‘Uh … yes. Yes, I suppose I can.’
‘Good!’ Cabot slapped him on the back. ‘’Tis much that needs doing.’
‘And quickly.’ Liam sucked in a deep breath. ‘This morning, then, I suppose we should make a start. Get an idea of what supplies there are in the castle. What money there is left in the coffers. And perhaps find out what the people of Nottingham have to say … what they need the most. And this hooded fella – whatever, whoever he is – the poor seem to think he’s some kind of a folk hero. As soon as we can, we need to deal with him.’
Cabot’s old face wrinkled with a smile. ‘Good decisions already, young man.’
‘And we should also get a message back to base,’ Liam said to Bob. ‘Let them know we’re working on it, and that Becks is down in Oxford, so they know where to beam a signal if they want to contact her.’
‘Affirmative,’ replied Bob. ‘I will prepare an encoded message to be carved on the gravestone.’
‘Gravestone?’
Liam offered Cabot a guilty shrug. ‘I suppose we should’ve asked first. We’re, uh … we’re using one of your graves up at Kirklees as a … as a sort of message board. Hope you don’t mind? It involves sort of carving a few lines and –’
Cabot frowned. ‘Ye are interfering with a man’s gravestone?’
Liam nodded.
‘Whose?’ he growled angrily.
‘Haskette.’
Cabot pursed his lips for a moment. ‘Oh, Brother Robert? Not to worry, the man was a fool anyway.’
CHAPTER 43
June 1194, Normandy, France
He stared across the cool blue of the English Channel. It glistened in the morning sun, calm as a millpond, quiet as a monk, as it lapped gently up the Normandy shingle and withdrew with a whisper.
King Richard finished urinating and tucked himself away. His gaze drifted along the coast towards the small cluster of ships beached and battened up, and the tents and marquees erected between them topped with pennants that twitched and swayed in the light breeze.
A party of English nobles had arrived to meet him in Normandy. All of them pledging their support for him, their men-at-arms, their money. His royal tent last night had been full of them, like errant schoolchildren, all trying to outdo each other in their demonstrations of unflinching loyalty to the crown.
Richard smiled.
Just like naughty children … blaming each other for the unrest in the north of England. The rumours, if they were to be believed, mentioned a rebellion of peasants. And these fools who had come to meet him in Normandy should have been maintaining the order of England
while he was away instead of bickering among themselves, jostling for favours and power.
And, of course, his brother John … The useless idiot appeared to have done little to help the situation. He was weak, that was his problem, that had always been his problem, a weakling, a coward.
Richard tasted bile in his throat and spat.
The whole ugly, cold, wet country of England disgusted him. His spineless brother, the squabbling two-faced nobles, the repulsive peasants … even the ugly language they spoke, Anglish. Its tones grated on his ears.
My kingdom. For what it is.
It was worth nothing more than the taxes he could throttle out of the miserable place. Taxes to raise a new army and reclaim his French lands lost during the last five years.
France. All of France … that was his birthright, his true home. That was what God wished for him. And more.
He’d known that since he was a young man. Known his destiny was to rule all of Christendom – not just that ugly wet island of Britain. And with such a magnificent force behind him, he would sweep once more into the Holy Lands and east into the Arabian deserts, wiping out Saladin’s army.
He smiled as a freshening breeze lifted the pennants above the tents into life and they fluttered with a renewed vigour.
God wants this for me.
Why else had the Lord led him to learn of the Treyarch Confession? Why else had the Lord ensured his success in retrieving the Grail from the Muslims? It was safe now. Safe on that ugly island across the Channel. Safe in the Royal Palace … and waiting patiently for him to return and unlock it.
He felt his arms and legs tremble with excitement at the thought of that.
He’d seen it briefly after his knights had retrieved it from the catacombs of Jerusalem; the yellowing brittle pages of manuscript filled with faint ink lines of writing. He thought he could sense a hum of divine energy coming from it, sense the meaning of it … even though the words were encoded. One brief glimpse and then he’d dispatched it with haste into the night with the Templars he most trusted to see it safely home to England, to the royal palace in Oxford.
