Day of the Predator Read online

  > hey, bob.

  > Is this Maddy?

  > no, it’s sal.

  > It is 2.37 a.m. You cannot sleep, Sal?

  >nightmares.

  > Are you recal ing your recruitment?

  Recruitment, that’s what the old man, Foster, had cal ed it. Like she’d had any real choice in the mat er. Life or death. Take my hand or be mashed to pulp amid a crumbling skyscraper. She shuddered. Great fragging choice.

  >yeah, my recruitment.

  > You have my sympathy, Sal.

  ‘Thanks.’ She spoke softly into the desk mic – too lazy to tap out any more. Anyway, the clickety-click of the keyboard echoing through the archway was far more likely to disturb the others than her speaking quietly.

  ‘I miss them so much, Bob.’

  > You miss your family?

  ‘Mum and Dad.’ She sighed. ‘It seems like years ago.’

  > You have been in the team 44 time cycles. 88 days precisely, Sal.

  Time cycles – the two-day time bubble that played out and reset for them, constantly keeping them and their eld and reset for them, constantly keeping them and their eld o ce in 10 and 11 September 2001, while the world outside moved on as normal.

  Outside … outside was New York – Brooklyn, to be more precise. Streets she was now get ing to know so wel . Even the people she had conversations with, people who were never going to remember her: the Chinese laundromat lady, the Iranian man running the grocery store on the corner. Every time they spoke, it was, for them, the rst time – a new face, a new customer to greet cheerily. But she already knew them, knew what they were about to say, how proud the Chinese lady was of her son, how angry the Iranian man was with the terrorists for bombing his city.

  This morning was the Tuesday, 11 September, the second day of the ever-reset ing time cycle. In just under six hours the rst airliner was going to crash into the Twin Towers, and New York and al her inhabitants were going to change forever.

  ‘So what’re you doing, Bob?’

  > Data col ation. Hard-drive maintenance. And reading a book.

  ‘Oh? Cool. What’re you reading?’

  A page of text appeared on the screen. She could see individual words momentarily highlight one after the other in rapid blinking succession as Bob ‘read’ while they talked.

  > Harry Pot er.

  Sal remembered seeing the old lms from the rst Sal remembered seeing the old lms from the rst decade of the century. They didn’t do much for her, but her parents had liked them as children.

  ‘Are you enjoying it?’

  Bob didn’t answer immediately. She noticed the ickering of highlighted words on the open page of text on the screen grind to a sudden halt, and the soft whirring sound of hard drives being spun momentarily ceased. Forming an opinion … that was something Bob struggled with. It required the computer system’s entire capacity for him to actual y formulate, or rather simulate, something as simple as a human emotion … a preference. A like or dislike.

  Final y, after a few seconds, she heard the hard drives whirring gently once again.

  > I like the magic very much.

  Sal smiled as she acknowledged how many terabytes of computing power had gone into that simple statement. If she had a mean streak in her, she could have asked him what colour he thought went best with violet, or what was tastier – chocolate or vanil a? It would probably lock the system for hours as Bob laboured through in nite decision loops to nal y come up with the answer that he was unable to compute a valid response.

  Bless him. Great at data retrieval, cross-referencing and processing. But don’t ask him to pick dessert o a menu.

  CHAPTER 3

  2001, New York

  Monday (time cycle 45)

  Most of the damage that happened here in the archway with the last time contamination has been xed up now –

  the holes in the wal s l ed again, the door to the back room replaced with a new sturdy one. And we got a brand-new emergency generator instal ed. Some workmen came in to set it up. We had to hide the time-portal equipment from them, and when they asked about al the computer screens at the desk Maddy told them we were a computer-game developer. I think they believed her. It’s a much more powerful generator, and more reliable than the last shadd-yah old one. I hope we don’t have to use it, though.

  We’ve also got an old TV set, a DVD player and one of those Nintendo machines. Liam loves the games. He’s mad about one stupid game with sil y characters driving around on go-karts throwing bananas at each other.

  Boys, eh?

  Maddy says we need to grow a new support unit. A new Bob. Just in case another time shift comes along that we need to deal with. Only, the new Bob won’t be entirely new. The body wil , yes, but she says we can upload Bob’s new. The body wil , yes, but she says we can upload Bob’s AI back into it and he’l be exactly like he was … and not the retarded idiot that plopped out of the growth tube last time. Which is a relief. Bob was so-o-o-o stupid when he was rst born.

  We xed the growth tubes. Some got damaged by those creature things that broke in, but they’re al functioning now, and we’ve got them l ed up with that stinking protein solution the foetuses oat in. We had to steal a load of that gloop from a hospital blood bank. It’s the fake blood they use, the plasma stu , but with a witches’ brew of added vitamins and proteins.

  Honestly, it’s like runny snot. But worse than that, because it smel s like vomit.

  What we don’t have yet, though, are the foetuses. Apparently we can’t go and grab any old one – they’re special y genetical y engineered sometime in the future …

  Maddy looked at Liam. ‘You ready?’

  ‘Aye,’ he replied, shivering as he stood behind her in nothing more than a pair of striped boxer shorts, and holding a watertight bag ful of clothes.

  She looked down at her own shivering body, trembling beneath her T-shirt. ‘Maybe one day we could get around to rigging up something to heat the water before we jump in.’‘That’s for sure.’

  She climbed the steps beside the perspex cylinder, looking down into the cold water, freshly run from the looking down into the cold water, freshly run from the water mains. She set led down on the top step beside the lip of the cylinder and dipped her toes in.

  A wet departure – that was the protocol. To ensure that nothing but them and the water they were oating in was sent back in time … and not any chunks of oor, or carpet or concrete or cabling that had no possible reason to exist in the past.

  ‘Oh Jeeeez! It’s freezing!’

  Liam squat ed down beside her. ‘Great.’

  Maddy shuddered then looked up at Sal, seated at the computer station. ‘What’s the departure count?’

  ‘Just over a minute.’

  ‘So,’ said Liam, slowly easing himself into the water, gasping as he did so. ‘You’re sure about this?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ No, she wasn’t. Not sure about anything. The old man, Foster, had left her in charge. Left her running this team and this eld o ce even though they’d barely survived their rst brush with time contamination. Al she had for help now was computer-Bob and a data folder on his hard drive entitled ‘Things You’l Probably Want to Ask’.

  ‘How do we grow new support units?’ was the name of one of the rst les she’d found in the folder when she’d delved into it a few weeks ago. First order of business had been get ing the grow-tubes up and running and get ing one of those clones on the go. When she’d double-clicked on it, what she’d got was an image of Foster’s face looking out of the monitor as he’d addressed the web cam. He out of the monitor as he’d addressed the web cam. He looked ten, perhaps twenty years younger than he had the morning he’d told her she was ready, wished her luck and walked out of Starbucks leaving her to run things. The Foster onscreen looked no more than fty. ‘So,’ he began, adjusting the ex so that the mic was in front of his mouth. ‘You’ve opened this le. Which means you’ve been careless and your support unit has been destroyed and now you need to gr
ow a new one.’ Foster had proceeded with detailed instructions on maintenance and feeding, and how the growth tubes work. But nal y, towards the end of the log entry, was the bit they’d been after.

  ‘Right … so the clones are grown from a store of engineered human foetuses. I’l presume you’ve used up the last of the refrigerated ones kept in your eld o ce and now you need more.’

  Not exactly used up; those of them mid-growth had al died in the tubes, poisoned by their own waste uids because the electric-powered pumps hadn’t been functioning. The bodies – pale, lifeless, hairless, jel y-like forms that ranged from something that could’ve sat in the palm of her hand to the body of a boy of eight or nine –

  had been taken care of. Taken out, weighted down and dumped in the river. Not an experience she ever wanted to repeat.

  ‘The good news is there are more of them. There’s a supply of viable candidate foetuses, al engineered with the silicon processor chip already housed in the cranial cavity. They’re ready to grow to ful term and, of course, cavity. They’re ready to grow to ful term and, of course, come with basic learning AI code pre-instal ed.’ The Foster on the monitor smiled coyly. ‘If you’ve been smart, you managed to retrieve your last support unit’s chip and preserved its AI …’

  She nodded. Yup. Wel , Liam had done that messy business.

  ‘… so any new support unit doesn’t need to start out from scratch as a complete imbecile, and you can upload the AI from the computer system. So, like I say, the good news is there’s more of them. But the bad news is they’re not going to be delivered to your front door like … like …

  some sort of a pizza delivery; I’m afraid you’ve got to go and get them yourselves.’

  Sal cal ed out a thirty-second warning and Maddy’s mind returned to the icy water in the displacement cylinder. She eased herself in beside Liam, her breath chu ng out at the cold. ‘Uhhh! This is f-f-f-freezing! How d-do you c-cope with it?’ she asked Liam, her teeth chat ering.

  He o ered her a lopsided grin. ‘It’s not like I get a choice, is it?’

  ‘Twenty seconds!’ cal ed out Sal.

  ‘When did you say we’re going, again?’ asked Liam.

  ‘I t-t-told you: 1906. San Francisco.’

  Liam’s eyebrows locked in concentration for a moment.

  ‘Hold on now … is that not the same year that … that –?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I remember my dad reading it in the Irish Times. It’s

  ‘I remember my dad reading it in the Irish Times. It’s the year that –’

  ‘Fifteen seconds!’

  Maddy let go of the side of the perspex cylinder and began treading water. ‘Liam, you’ve g-got to go under now.

  ’ ‘I know … I know! Bleedin’ hate this bit.’

  ‘Maybe Sal and I should t-teach you how to swim some time?’

  ‘Ten seconds!’

  ‘Oh Jay-zus-’n’-Mary, why does time travel have to be done this way? Why did that Waldstein fel a have to be so stupid as to invent bleedin’ time travel in the rst place!’

  ‘You wanna blame someone … b-blame the Chinese what’s-his-name guy who worked it out in the rst place.’

  Liam nodded. ‘Aghh, wel , him too!’

  ‘Five seconds!’ cal ed Sal. ‘You real y need to duck under now!’

  Maddy held her hand above his head. ‘Need me to push you under?’

  ‘No! I’l just … I’l , ah … Al right!’

  Liam sucked in a lungful of air and clasped his nose with his free hand.

  ‘S-see you on the other side,’ she ut ered as she pushed him under the water. Then sucked in air and submerged as wel .

  Oh Jeez … here goes.

  Her rst time. Her rst time into the past, not counting her recruitment from 2010. She’d been too busy checking her recruitment from 2010. She’d been too busy checking the coordinates were set right, arranging the return window time-stamp, checking Sal had pul ed out the right clothes for them to wear from the old closet in the back room, making sure she remembered the details of their mission … too busy with al those things to realize how ut erly terri ed she was at the prospect of being pushed out of space-time, through chaos space – and God knows what that was – to emerge back into the space-time of nearly a hundred years ago.

  She opened her eyes under the water and saw the foggy form of Liam’s scrawny body thrashing around in blind panic. She saw bubbles zig-zagging up around him. She could see the dim lamp on the computer desk through the tube’s scu ed plastic, the faint outline of Sal … then …

  … Then they were fal ing, tumbling through darkness.

  CHAPTER 4

  2015, Texas

  ‘OK, students, we’l be arriving at the institute very shortly, so I want you al to be on your very best behaviour,’ said Mr Whitmore, absentmindedly scratching at the scru y saltand-pepper stubble around his mouth. He considered it a ful beard even if no one else did. ‘As I’m sure you wil be,’ he added.

  Edward Chan sighed and looked out of the coach’s broad window at the scrub beside the highway. Outside the air-conditioned comfort of the coach it was another blistering Texas day. Hot and bright. Two things he hated. He much preferred his dark bedroom back in Houston, drapes drawn, an ultraviolet lamp making the manga posters on his black bedroom wal s glow like the halogen signs outside some cool nightclub.

  Dark and cool and peaceful. A place far away from the incessant noise of other kids, the shril laughter of clusters of girls. High-school girls always seemed to come in clusters – mean, spiteful clusters that sniggered and whispered and pointed. And the boys … If it was possible, they were even worse. The jocks – the alpha-male types –

  loud, brash, great at sports, oozing easy con dence, gangsta rap hissing out of their iPod earbuds, high-ving each rap hissing out of their iPod earbuds, high-ving each other for any reason. Golden-tanned, sandy-haired, blueeyed boys who, you could tel , would ease through school, ease through col ege, ease through life … and never once wonder if someone was whispering behind their back, laughing at them, pointing at them.

  That was the tribal system at school: the girls – giggly gaggles of Hannah Montana clones, the jocks in their swaggering gangsta gangs … and nal y the third category, the ones like Edward Chan – the freaks. Loners, emos, geeks, nerds: the cookies that didn’t quite t the cookiecut er machine that was high school. His dad was always tel ing him it was the freaks that ended up doing the great things. It was the freaks who became dotcom bil ionaires, famous inventors, movie directors, rock stars … even presidents. The jocks, on the other hand, ended up sel ing real estate or managing WalMart stores. And the Hannah Montanas ended up becoming stay-at-home moms, get ing fat, bored and lonely. Ahead of the coach he could see a cluster of pale buildings emerging from the ochre drabness, and presently they slowed down and stopped at a security checkpoint. The other kids on the coach, about thirty of them, al a couple of years older than Edward, began to bob in their seats, craning their necks to look at the armed security guards and the lab buildings up ahead.

  ‘Please stay seated for the moment, guys,’ said Mr Whitmore over the coach’s PA system.

  Edward stretched to look over the headrest of the seat Edward stretched to look over the headrest of the seat in front of him. He saw a man climb up the steps on to the coach. A smart man in a pale linen suit. He shook hands with Mr Whitmore, the school principal who was chaperoning the students.

  ‘Right, guys, I’m going to hand you over to Mr Kel y, who is from the institute. He’s going to be showing us around the facilities today.’

  Mr Kel y took the microphone from him. ‘Good morning, boys and girls. Let me rst say welcome to the institute. It’s an honour to have you kids come and visit. As I understand it, you guys have al been nominated by your various schools to come along today because you’re al straight-A students?’

  Whitmore shook his head. ‘Not quite, Mr Kel y. “Mostimproved performers”. Students who’ve most clea
rly demonstrated a wil ingness to learn. We have al levels and abilities here on this coach, from schools right across the state, but what they al have in common is the spectacular improvement in their year-end SATs scores. These students are the ones who’ve worked the hardest to bet er themselves.’

  Mr Kel y’s tanned face was split with a broad smile.

  ‘Fantastic! We like improvers here. Go-get ers. I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two of you on this coach ended up working for us here one day, huh?’

  There was a token of polite laughter up and down the rows of seats.

  The coach lurched slowly forward, down a long straight The coach lurched slowly forward, down a long straight driveway anked by freshly cut lawns, wet with the moisture from water sprinklers.

  ‘OK, guys, we’l shortly be arriving at the visitors’

  reception area, where you can get o . We have some refreshments ready for you before we start the tour of this facility. I wil be your guide for today, and, as I’m talking, if you have any questions at al , please don’t be afraid to raise your hands and ask. We want you to get the most out of today … to understand what our work is here and how very important it is to the environment.’

  Edward looked out of the window as the coach approached a decorative owerbed and swung slowly around it. In the middle, framed by an arrangement of vivid yel ow chrysanthemums, was a sign: WELCOME TO TERI: TEXAS ADVANCED ENERGY RESEARCH INSTITUTE.

  CHAPTER 5

  1906, San Francisco

  ‘Hey! Don’t turn around yet – I’m not ready,’ snapped Maddy irritably.

  Liam stayed where he was, facing the grubby redbrick wal in front of him. The back al ey reeked of rot ing sh, and he wondered if he lingered too much longer here whether the smel was going to be stuck on him for the rest of the day.

  ‘Are you not done yet?’ he asked.