TimeRiders Page 17

  Is it possible I’m wrong?

  In the sky he watched a squadron of Messerschmitt Jetlanders swoop down from a higher altitude and hover just above the deserted streets below, sweeping them with their searchlights.

  What was left of the world to conquer would present even less of an obstacle than America had. His Reich was now unassailable, unbeatable, all powerful. The remaining countries would fall one by one. Russia and China, two large but backward nations, were isolated, blockaded on all fronts. Sooner or later he could finish them off and be done with war.

  Nonetheless, it was an unsettling prospect that someone somewhere out there in the future could – if they got very lucky – find a way to get to him.

  Or it might be something far worse, Paul. Do you remember what the old man Waldstein once told you?

  Kramer cursed, glancing at the body. He ordered his guards standing outside to take the thing away and dispose of it. He’d seen enough bloodshed for one day… and there was much to attend to now that the United States had officially surrendered.

  CHAPTER 46

  1956, Washington DC

  It was dark and wet. Bob’s eyes had adjusted hours ago to the dimness down here in the sewers. Pallid tendrils of light lanced through the grating in the pavement above. It was a grey, overcast afternoon in Washington DC, the day after America had been defeated by its invaders.

  The support unit sat motionless on a damp concrete sill, his legs dangling in the foul-smelling water that trickled past.

  From above, he could hear the occasional movement of vehicles, the tramping of boots and every now and then the rattle-dash of distant gunfire. Over the last twenty hours, thousands of people, potential trouble-makers – those who might try their hand at rallying the people: senators, congressmen, judges, lawyers, journalists – had been rounded up and put on convoys of trucks heading out of the city. The rest of the city’s population cowered in their homes and could only wonder at what Kramer and his invasion force would do with them all now.

  It was quiet at the moment, save for the persistent echo of water dripping from the sewer’s curved brick ceiling and the languid trickling of stinking sewage.

  Bob sat motionless. Absent-mindedly a finger flicked the safety catch of the pulse carbine held in his hands. On and off, off and on, the metallic click echoing loudly down the sewer.

  Waiting patiently. Counting down on his internal clock.

  Bob closed his eyes.

  [Information: final window due in 23 minutes]

  He was only ten minutes from the White House, a mile as the crow flies, and half that distance he could cover underground along the network of sewage tunnels, emerging from a manhole along Pennsylvania Avenue. He would have to run the rest of the way in plain view. His black rubber suit and mask might disguise him for a short few moments. But since all the other enemy soldiers had discarded those and were now wearing their grey Wehrmacht uniforms, he’d most probably attract attention the instant he was above ground.

  However, if he timed things correctly, and was lucky, he stood a fair chance of managing to fight his way quickly to the space beneath that copse of cedar trees just as the air began to shimmer and the window appeared. Yet it was quite probable that his body would suffer too much combat damage to recover itself.

  But that was of little importance.

  The small wafer of silicon in his head was all that mattered; getting that through the window and sent back to the future in one piece was the only consideration. Even if the best he could do was poke his head into the portal as it activated, leaving his headless corpse behind, then that would satisfy his primary mission objective. The gathered intelligence would be back with the field office, precisely where it needed to be.

  Bob stirred. It was nearly time for him to make his move.

  But something in his small organic mind urged him to reassess his mission priorities, like a small child’s nagging voice. A whimpering plea that travelled down thin internal wires.

  Don’t leave him behind.

  Bob’s head twitched uneasily as his AI attempted to deal with conflicting assertions. There was an authoritative, emotionless silicon reply to that child’s voice.

  [Mission objective: gather and return information]

  But… there was so little information to relay, so very little that they’d managed to gather. Bob could return to the field office – alive or dead – and they could download from his head what he’d seen and heard. But the vast majority of this data was just smoke and gunfire; there was little they’d learned that could be of use. Not enough to fix on a precise point of origin for this time contamination. More information was needed, much more. Specifically – knowledge of the events that had come before this invasion. Located here in 1956 he had a far better chance of uncovering the recent past than back in the altered world of 2001.

  His head convulsed anxiously, his finger thumbed the safety catch with increasingly distracted vigour.

  [Mission parameters require reprioritization ]

  The unit was out of his comfort zone now. His AI could deal with detailed and speedy situation analysis, but decision-making was something far better dealt with by a human mind. His on-board memory recalled Foster’s words from a few days ago.

  ‘… And that’s the reason the agency sends a human operative back as well as the support unit. A robot can’t make intuitive judgements, Liam… not nearly as well as a human can…’

  The tiny nodule of wrinkled flesh in Bob’s skull – the undeveloped brain – understood this all too well. It understood help was needed while the hard-wired computer code continued to argue the case that mission orders were orders to be obeyed at all costs.

  Must Find Him.

  [Recommendation: update mission parameters]

  Bob’s finger froze; his body remained rigid, utterly still. His internal computer focused now on one thing alone, every micro-volt of computing power devoted to one end.

  Re-ordering his mission priorities.

  Making a decision.

  [Mission updated: locate and rescue Operative Liam O’Connor]

  CHAPTER 47

  2001, New York

  Foster and Maddy watched the countdown on the computer screen. ‘Thirty seconds,’ he announced.

  Maddy nodded; she could see the display too. ‘And what if they miss this window as well?’

  ‘We’ll deal with that when – if – it comes to it.’

  Maddy looked over her shoulder at the floor, an area cleared of cables and detritus with the faint circle of chalk inscribed in the middle where Liam and Bob were – hopefully – going to materialize very soon. She was glad Foster had sent Sal out to sit in Times Square and observe. If she was here, she’d be worrying, interrupting, agitating… distracting. Foster already looked stressed enough as it was, without having to constantly assure her Liam and Bob were going to be fine.

  And what if they came back, Liam wounded… or worse?

  Better that Sal was elsewhere right now.

  ‘Since they missed the other back-ups,’ she said, ‘something must have happened to them. Right?’

  ‘We don’t know that for sure. Quite often I’ve missed a scheduled window or two on the missions I’ve been on,’ said Foster. ‘The unforeseen happens – that’s why we have several back-ups.’

  ‘But if they do miss this one…?’

  He looked at the display.

  Ten seconds.

  ‘If they miss this one, then we need to communicate a new rendezvous point to them.’

  She looked at him. ‘Communicate? How?’

  ‘It’s complicated. I’ll talk you through that later.’

  She let out a breath. ‘So it’s not the end of the world, then? I thought… you know… I thought we’d lost them forever.’

  Foster checked the phase interruption indicator; no sign of any shifting packets of density where the extraction portal was due to open. That was good. The soldiers must have gone.

  ‘All right…
here we go,’ he said.

  The displacement machinery began to hum and the lights in the archway dimmed as all power diverted towards it. Then, across the floor from them a large sphere suddenly began to shimmer, and through the undulating air Maddy thought she could make out the dancing, twisting form of tree trunks.

  ‘Come on, Liam,’ whispered Maddy. ‘Move your butt.’

  Foster swallowed anxiously. ‘Yes, get a move on.’

  If they were there, they should step through immediately. Keeping a portal open unnecessarily wasn’t wise; a window on to chaotic dimensions in which anything could lurk… The sooner it was closed the better.

  ‘Come on!’ he uttered impatiently.

  The sphere hovered, shimmered, glowing a soft blue in the flickering dimness of the archway. Foster glanced at the computer screen. The portal had been open ten seconds and a red caution message had already begun flashing on the screen.

  ‘I have to close it,’ said Foster. ‘Any longer and we risk attracting a seeker. They’re not there.’

  ‘No!’ cried Maddy. ‘Let it stay open just a bit –’

  ‘They’ve failed the rendezvous,’ snapped Foster. He hit the abort button on the screen and instantly the sphere vanished, the hum of surging power diminished and the dimmed flickering ceiling lights grew bright once more.

  ‘Dammit, Foster, they might just have been running a bit late!’

  ‘There’s no running late, Madelaine. You’re either there or you’re not. The window opens, and either they step through or they don’t. I’m afraid there’s no leaving it open just to wait and see.’

  They sat in silence for a moment, staring out across the floor at the chalk circle, as if hoping both Liam and Bob might still magically appear, Liam with a guilty expression on his face for their rather late arrival.

  ‘So… OK. It’s not the end of the world, then,’ said Maddy, forcing herself to be businesslike. ‘You mentioned something about sending a message?’

  Foster nodded. ‘That’s right. We need to send them details on a new time-stamp… and perhaps we need to pick another location. Not too far away from the first location, but somewhere more discreet, less busy, I think would be better.’

  Maddy pursed her lips. ‘And how exactly will they get this message?’

  ‘Tachyon transmission,’ he replied. ‘I’ll give you the technical explanation later… It’s complicated.’

  She shrugged. ‘I can wait.’

  CHAPTER 48

  1956, command ship above Washington DC

  Kramer dined alone. He wasn’t in the mood to celebrate the victory with Reichsmarschall Karl Haas, the senior divisional commanders and their aides. Several days since the surrender, and despite a few minor skirmishes as several individual US states in the west fought on bitterly, America was now a part of the Greater Reich.

  His high command was celebrating right now, no doubt solemnly toasting their absent Führer in smart dress uniforms, then sitting down together in the White House’s state hall to discuss the administrative business of running America. He trusted Karl to keep all those ambitious generals and Gauleiters in line; he suspected they feared him almost as much as they did their Führer.

  No, tonight he wanted to be alone. Things were troubling him.

  That body, that damned body… the unsettling questions it raised. Despite what Karl had said, that was no corpse twisted by a mere incendiary grenade. He’d seen what a time portal could do to a human body once before. He’d never forget the twisted flesh, organs turned inside out and still somehow managing to function… for a while.

  ‘Someone from the future’s after us,’ he muttered to himself.

  He could almost feel that someone probing the past, finding their way slowly towards him, stalking him. At any moment the air could shimmer beside the table and an assassin appear, a gun raised and ready to execute him. It was something Kramer constantly feared. The recurring nightmare had troubled him almost every night for the last fifteen years – awakening in his bed in the dark stillness of night to see an assassin leaning over him and announcing his immediate execution for travelling through time.

  The body… that body… had made his nightmares a thousand-fold worse, and now he spent every waking hour fearing what might be out there. It was a struggle to keep this torment from Karl, to keep his composure in front of the man. He wondered sometimes if there was an easier way out.

  A soft voice whispered quietly in his head.

  There is a way out for you, you know.

  Suicide?

  No, another way.

  He looked out of the window at a dark city punctuated with sporadic smouldering fires and speared with the sweeping, searching floodlights coming from his command ship.

  Think on it.

  His quiet voice. The voice that was always there, had always been with him as long as he could remember. The voice of… ambition… daring him on, pushing him to do those things he wouldn’t normally have the resolve to do. As a child it had helped him achieve academic success, as a young man driven him to earn a doctorate in quantum physics, to become a research fellow at the Waldstein Institute. It had given him the confidence to finally put together his audacious plan to go back into history and make it his.

  You could destroy this world, couldn’t you, Paul? After all, it’s your world now. All yours to do with as you wish.

  ‘That’s madness,’ he replied, putting down his fork suddenly. It clattered noisily on the plate, filling his large, stately quarters with a diminishing echo.

  Madness, is it?

  Since going through time, convincing Hitler to accept him into his inner circle and finally becoming the Führer himself, the voice had become quiet, unneeded by him. Like a child brooding, sulking. But now – since that body, in fact – it seemed to have found a new energy.

  Madness, is it? What would happen if a traveller from the future were to appear right here and put a bullet through your brain?

  Kramer closed his eyes. The thought had him trembling. The answer was obvious. This history he had worked so hard to create would change.

  And what if a traveller learned the exact time and place that you entered history? Those woods, 1941? And killed you there? Before you met Hitler?

  ‘The world would be as it was,’ he replied aloud. ‘The future would once again be the dark and dying one we left behind.’

  That’s right. A dying world. Choking on toxic fumes. The seas poisoned. People slowly starving. In a way, it would be kinder to end it now. Would it not?

  Kinder? Kramer hadn’t thought about the world they’d left behind in a long time. Global warming had become an uncontrollable force. By 2050 the ice-caps had finally vanished. The entire African continent was as sun-blasted and lifeless as the surface of Mars. And people, nine billion of them, crowded into the few tolerable regions of the earth left, most of them starving migrants living in dust-blown shanty towns outside the few mega-cities. Like almost every other species on earth, Kramer wondered whether one day mankind would also eventually become extinct.

  ‘Kinder,’ he said eventually. ‘Perhaps it would.’

  Much kinder.

  He had no appetite for his meal now.

  You trust me, Paul, don’t you?

  He’d always trusted his inner voice, his instinct. It had guided him far better in his life than any tutor or mentor, any father-figure or friend. ‘If you can’t trust your own instinct,’ someone had once told him, ‘then you’re a lost man.’

  Don’t you see? Someone or something is out there. And it will find you, whatever you do, however much you decide to erase history and disguise your tracks. It will eventually find you. The body was a warning.

  Deep down he knew there was truth in that. Perhaps he’d known that from the moment he and Karl had been presented with that cruelly twisted corpse, but he’d been unable to bring himself to admit it.

  I think you realize now… your run of luck has finally come to an end.

  ‘Fift
een years,’ he said.

  That’s right, fifteen years. Twelve of them as the world’s greatest ruler. And in that time you’ve achieved so very much. But your time has finally run out. Someone has come to get you.

  ‘A time traveller?’

  Possibly. Or worse.

  ‘Worse?’

  You’ve meddled with time. You’ve crossed dimensions. You’ve stepped through chaos itself. There’s no knowing for sure what seeks you out.

  Kramer felt his guts twist with anxiety, a churning unease eating away inside.

  An agent of the future could take this world from you with an assassin’s bullet. But it could be far worse. Something we can never hope to understand could come for you… could be out there in that dark city right now…

  He felt his scalp prickle, his skin turn cold.

  But you could prevent that.

  ‘By destroying this world?’

  Yes, Paul… by destroying this world.

  He pushed his chair back. Oddly, there was some growing comfort in that notion. This world rendered still, silent, lifeless and unchanging. An everlasting monument to the world created by Paul Kramer. All life ended with a sudden flash, instead of the protracted misery that would exist in the future. And there was a way – a doomsday device he’d considered in his idle moments.

  We both knew this might happen one day. Didn’t we? Perhaps it was always going to be your destiny.

  Kramer narrowed his eyes, almost sensing the inevitable subtle shifting of destiny ahead of him, future histories adjusting, rewriting, as he felt his decision being firmly made.

  ‘Then it has to be so.’

  His voice, his instinct, seemed appeased by that.

  A fitting end to things, Paul. Mankind was always destined to destroy itself. It’s in our nature to destroy all that we create. And you will be the one who does it.

  Isn’t that just a little bit like being God?

  CHAPTER 49