by Alex Scarrow
The Grail will give him nothing, John. And … you will be king in less than five years.
‘Kiss my hand!’ commanded Richard.
‘Yes … yes, of course,’ muttered John.
CHAPTER 83
2001, New York
Adam stood beside Sal and gazed out at the darkness. America, at least what they could see of it, a dark wilderness of tall cedar trees beneath a clear night sky and a crescent moon that gazed down at its own shimmering reflection on the gently rippling surface of the East River.
‘It’s like … It’s just how I imagine America must have looked before Columbus first landed,’ Adam whispered. ‘Out there somewhere, there must be tribes of Native Americans, running around, free and living just as they were back in the fifteenth century.’
Sal nodded. ‘I like it like this. No people.’
‘So … Maddy said you came from 2026?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Tell me, what’s it like?’
She shrugged. ‘Crowded. Busy. Noisy. At least where we lived it was.’
‘Is there any really cool … you know, technology?’
‘Like?’
‘I dunno – flying cars or something?’
Sal snorted. ‘No. It’s all rickshaws and battered old Nanos. The air’s thick with toxins and stuff. And there were the troubles in the north.’
‘Troubles?’
‘Terrorists, bombs. Things weren’t so good with Taliban-Pakistan. My father worried about what was going to happen in India. What with that and the flooding areas and migrants.’
They listened to the woods, the call of a heron, the lapping of the river up the shingle banks nearby.
‘The future doesn’t sound so great,’ said Adam.
‘Uh-uh. I remember … everything felt so … so –’ she struggled to find a word that worked – ‘so … temporary. Like you couldn’t really get used to anything, because you knew it wasn’t going to last forever.’
‘Sheesh, that’s my future too, then. Twenty-five years from now.’ He did a quick sum. ‘I’ll be fifty-two, fifty-three then. I wonder if I’ll still be in New York?’
‘New York’s not so good,’ she replied. ‘They started evacuating parts of it.’
‘Flooding?’
‘Uh-huh. And growing crime and food riots and stuff. Like we were having in Mumbai.’
‘Jesus,’ Adam sighed. ‘You make the future sound depressing.’
‘Sorry,’ she replied softly.
‘No – not your fault, Sal. Thanks for, you know, being honest about it.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Makes you wonder why you bother doing anything if that’s how it all goes. Like, why am I bothering with my consulting job? Saving up for a retirement that sounds like, well … a nightmare.’
‘It’s only a nightmare for the poor,’ she replied. ‘For those with lots of money it’s just …’ Sal hesitated.
‘Sal? What is it?’
She looked at him. ‘I think there’s a big wave coming.’ She leaned around and ducked her head under the shutter. ‘Maddy! Time wave! Big one!’
Maddy pulled herself off the bunk and staggered bleary-eyed to join them in the doorway.
‘There it is!’ said Sal, pointing east.
A dark wall approached; like last time, rolling in from the Atlantic, looking like a mountain range advancing rapidly towards them.
‘Better come inside, so you’re not right on the edge of the concrete,’ Maddy said, pointing at the crumbling edge of the field office’s force-field effect. Adam and Sal shuffled quickly inside and crouched on the floor just inside the archway.
‘Here it comes,’ uttered Maddy. ‘Just hope this one gets us back.’
Adam watched the churning black wall approach like a tsunami, blotting out the sky, the stars, the crescent moon. ‘I wonder whether we’d be better hanging on to this,’ he said, nodding at the wilderness. ‘Given how it all goes in the future.’
‘Too late,’ said Sal.
The time wave rolled over Manhattan and the distant tall trees quivered and shook and vanished and swirled into a maelstrom of flickering possibilities. As the wave swept across the broad river, Adam thought he saw the ghostly outline of skyscrapers forming. Then, with a fresh gust of wind pushed before it, the wave was over them; a destructive tornado passing momentarily overhead, eating up reality that shouldn’t be and laying down, in its wake, reality that should.
And then as soon as it had arrived it was gone.
Outside, a cobbled street littered with plastic bags and several wheeled dustbins. And the ambient noises of New York.
Sal was the first to step out. She looked to her left, towards the river, and nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘looks like we’re back home.’
Adam and Maddy joined her. Manhattan glistened, flickered, shimmered in the night; the sky punctuated with the far-off winking lights of commercial airliners coming in to JFK and LaGuardia. A distant police siren, the booming of someone’s sound system.
A Monday night in New York, still very much alive, noisy and busy, even approaching midnight.
‘I better go check our database and see if history’s properly back,’ said Maddy.
Sal and Adam watched the night in silence for a while.
‘I kind of liked Manhattan the way it just was,’ said Adam.
‘Uh-huh,’ said Sal sadly. ‘Me too.’
CHAPTER 84
1194, Kirklees Priory, Yorkshire
It was a cool morning. For a change the clear blue sky with its relentlessly hot sun was tucked away behind a skein of combed-out clouds that looked thicker towards the west.
Cabot looked out of the stable across the priory’s parched vegetable gardens. ‘Looks like rain is coming. That is good.’
Liam admired the old man’s calming air of common sense. Amid all the things that had gone on, he was so very easily able to come back to his priory, to resume a role of quiet contemplation and address the practical matters of their small order.
‘When will ye leave?’ asked Cabot.
‘Soon,’ replied Liam. ‘Bob and Becks have a device in their heads that sort of does them in if they stay in a place for too long. Time’s nearly up, isn’t it?’
Bob nodded. ‘Remaining mission time: thirty-seven hours, forty-three minutes.’
‘A window will open just before that time runs out,’ said Liam, ‘unless we signal the field office to open one up sooner.’
‘Suggestion,’ said Becks, ‘it is not necessary to communicate again. The window in thirty-seven hours will be adequate.’
‘Agreed,’ said Bob.
Liam nodded. ‘Fine, then we’re in no hurry.’
The siege at Nottingham had ended peaceably. Although the citizens of the town had been quaking in fear at what King Richard would do to them, he had surprised them all with his unexpected leniency. There’d been some grumbling among the assembled army and their controlling barons, earls and dukes, who’d all been assuming they’d get a share of the town’s loot.
John had been sent with an escort of soldiers to London. Officially ‘pardoned’ by Richard, but perhaps not entirely trusted by him. Rumour was, John was going to be kept in the Tower for an undefined period as a punishment.
Becks had been allowed to visit him one last time before he was despatched south. She said he appeared to be relieved to still have his head on his shoulders.
‘He also appears to be exhibiting a different behavioural pattern,’ she’d reported after seeing him. Liam had asked her to describe it. ‘He no longer shakes. His at-rest heart rate is within normal parameters,’ she replied coolly. Liam had laughed at that. She’d managed to take his pulse as they’d embraced one last time.
‘I believe he’d make a good king,’ Cabot had said. ‘He may not ever be a great commander of soldiers, but he has other qualities worth speaking of. Prudence. Caution. Compassion.’
Compassion? Liam wondered now.
Perhaps. History was going to judge John harshly; he wa
s destined to be known as England’s worst king. The king unable to hold on to the French territories his much ‘braver’ older brother fought so hard to keep hold of. The king who signed the Magna Carta granting legal rights to its subjects, but only because of the pressures put on him by England’s ‘valiant’ nobles.
There was a correct history, and it seemed like they’d managed to restore it. But Liam couldn’t help wondering if this ‘correct’ history, as it was recorded in history books and encyclopedias, was a true reflection of the past. A part of him was always going to wonder if the signing of the Magna Carta – signing away the most powerful privileges of the monarch – was really the result of nobles fighting for the rights of their peasants … or whether it was, in fact, King John’s idea, a gratitude to the common people of Nottingham for fighting for him.
‘Liam.’ Becks’s voice cut through his musings.
‘Uh?’
‘Liam, Bob and I have one remaining mission task.’
Liam looked at her, at Bob. ‘What now?’
Bob answered. ‘The Voynich Manuscript dates from this time. It has yet to be written.’
‘We have to write it,’ said Becks.
His jaw sagged open. ‘Hold on! Are you – you’re saying this Voynich thing was …?’
‘Was originally written by us?’ Becks nodded. ‘Yes. It was written by us to ensure we visited this time, this place.’
Liam frowned, trying to put the circular logic together. ‘But does that mean we’ve been here before?’ He scratched at his temple where a thin plume of grey hair grew.
‘It could mean that at some point in time one or more of us has been here before to seed the Voynich Manuscript,’ said Bob.
‘You mean one of us will come here?’
‘Correct. Since we have no knowledge of it, this has yet to happen.’
‘But … but that means deliberately altering history, right? The very thing we’re supposed to be preventing?’ His brows knitted with confusion. ‘Hang on! Does that mean those clues that the Adam fella spotted …?’
‘Those are clues that were deliberately seeded to ensure Adam Lewis alone was able to identify and decode a specific portion of the Voynich Manuscript … in order to flag our attention,’ said Bob.
‘That is now no longer required,’ Becks continued. ‘The Voynich Manuscript must be written without those coded flags.’
‘Uh? But …?’
‘We no longer need to be alerted and brought to this place,’ said Bob. He turned to Becks. ‘This is also your conclusion?’
She nodded. ‘I concur. History is corrected. It is now an unacceptable historical contaminant for any of the Voynich to be translated.’
‘So … what’re you going to write?’ asked Liam.
‘I have detailed visual records of the document. I can duplicate it as it was, but without the South American characters that originally flagged Adam Lewis’s attention.’
‘So that means –’ Liam frowned as he worked the logic through – ‘he’ll have never known about us?’
‘Affirmative. And, of course, never have tracked us down to New York.’
‘Right.’ He looked across at Cabot, sitting on a wooden bucket, looking almost as bemused at the exchange as Liam felt. ‘And what about our good friend here, Mr Cabot?’
Cabot smiled. ‘Aye. I was wondering when ye would be considering me.’
Both Becks and Bob looked at him dispassionately.
‘No!’ said Liam. ‘You’re not going to kill him, so help me! We couldn’t have fixed this all up without the fella’s help. You’re not going to hurt him – and that’s an order to both of you!’
Both support units calmly nodded. ‘Termination in this instance will not be necessary,’ said Bob. ‘Cabot is required to ensure the safekeeping of the document.’
‘Agreed,’ said Becks. ‘So long as you do not speak of all the things you have seen,’ she said, looking at Cabot pointedly. Liam realized she was right. The old man had gone through with her to the twenty-first century. God knows what he must have seen. But then Liam imagined little of what he saw must have made sense, little of what he saw and heard could be of any use to him.
Cabot scratched his beard. ‘And who would believe what I have seen? They will call me a fool.’
‘She’s right,’ said Liam. ‘We still need you to mind the Voynich Manuscript. It has to stay with you alone. You can’t tell anyone about any of this.’
‘Fear not, Liam,’ he laughed gently, ‘I have no desire to be burned as a heretic. I will not talk of round worlds, or days yet to be, or a place called “New” York. Ye can trust in that. ’
Liam smiled and offered his hand. ‘It’s a deal, then, Mr Cabot.’
He grasped it. ‘A deal, Liam of Connor.’
Becks and Bob both stood up at the same time. Liam guessed they must have been quietly exchanging data. ‘You two all right?’
‘We should proceed with creating the Voynich Manuscript,’ said Becks. ‘It is two hundred and thirty-four pages of manuscript and will require approximately seven hours to duplicate.’ She turned to Cabot. ‘I will require parchment and ink. Do you have these things?’
Cabot nodded. ‘We have. The priory’s librarian will not be a happy man … but I shall see to it.’
‘Thanks,’ said Liam. The three of them watched the old man go. ‘We can trust him,’ he said.
‘We know where to locate him if a contamination originates from this point,’ said Bob.
‘He is an acceptable risk,’ said Becks. ‘And terminating him would be simple.’
Liam shook his head at them. ‘You really do make a charming couple, so you do.’
They both looked at each other, then back at him. ‘Please explain.’
Liam waved that away. ‘Never mind.’
CHAPTER 85
2001, New York
‘Yeah, the film poster’s gone,’ said Sal, standing outside the Golden Screen cinema and studying the billboards. ‘What’s that?’ she said into her cell phone. Several yellow taxis lined up on the far side of 7th Avenue were honking at a delivery truck backing into a side road.
‘Yeah, I’m positive! No sign of it. Nothing on the “coming soon” list. It’s gone.’
She nodded several times at Maddy’s instructions, then hung up. She looked around. This was Tuesday morning as she knew it; she was out and about a little earlier than normal, but it all looked as she expected it to look.
Times Square hummed with life, the sky a deep welcoming blue and no sign of this movie The Manuscript. It was gone. The tiny ripple they’d felt just half an hour ago had been Adam Lewis’s claim to fame being subtly erased from history.
No film starring Leonardo DiCaprio on the run from sinister agents and clutching an ancient-looking scroll in one fist.
She suddenly felt a rumble in her stomach and realized she hadn’t eaten a thing since yesterday lunchtime. She checked her watch. It was 7.23 a.m. An hour and twenty-two minutes to go until Tuesday turned into its regularly scheduled horror show. Time enough to go for a bottle of soda and a cream -cheese bagel.
*
Maddy tapped her phone and put it down on the desk. ‘It’s gone, Adam,’ she said. ‘The movie about you and the Voynich, well … it never happened.’
He ran a hand through his hair. ‘What does that mean, though? Have I been deleted from the world or something?’ His eyes widened with a horrible thought. ‘Oh God, is there another different me out there somewhere?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No … it’s OK. Just the one you. But your life’s a different one now, that’s all. If the wave had come while you’d been standing outside, you wouldn’t know any different. You’d be off living that life, wherever it is. But because you were inside our field, it means you’ve got to go out and track your new life down, find out what it is … where it is.’
‘I – that’s – you telling me I might not be living in New York any more?’
Maddy shrugged. �
�I dunno. You could be. You might be living back in England. Who knows?’
He pulled his apartment key out of his jacket pocket. ‘You’re saying if I go back to my apartment, it might not be mine?’
‘I’ve no idea. Probably not.’
He looked like he was struggling with the idea of that.
‘Your life is probably going to be very different, Adam. You should go and find out what it is. Maybe call your mom and dad – you’ve got parents, right?’
He shrugged. ‘I did. God knows if I do now.’
‘Call them. Talk to them, find out who you are.’ She laughed softly, not unkindly. ‘They’ll probably think you’ve gone mad, though.’
‘You can say that again.’
Adam stood up uncertainly, grabbed his expensive suit jacket, draped over the back of an armchair. ‘It’s been a weird twenty-four hours, hasn’t it?’
She nodded. ‘Very weird.’
‘I feel … I feel like I’ve known you, and Sal and the others, for ages. But I knocked on that shutter just a day ago.’
She smiled sadly. ‘That’s time travel. Messes your head up.’
He looked at her. ‘Could I not stay?’
The question caught her unawares. A part of her longed to say yes. To have someone she could share the leadership role with. To have someone she could offload on to … to confide in. To …
He can’t stay, Maddy. You know that.
‘Adam … I, uh … I don’t think so. I’m not sure I have the authority, the right, to be recruiting people.’
‘But,’ he said coyly, ‘surely I know too much now? I’ve got to be some kind of a security risk? Better for me to join you chaps, right? Than be out there – you know, blabbing about all the stuff I’ve seen?’
