TimeRiders 05 - Gates of Rome Page 6

  She cocked her head casually. ‘I’m sort of past caring, Liam. Somebody owes us an explanation. We’ve been through Hell and back several times over. We’ve been doing his dirty work pretty much blind. I’m not lifting another finger until we get some information.’

  Sal nodded at that. ‘Yeah. It’s not fair. They should trust us now.’

  ‘It’s he … not they,’ corrected Maddy.

  Sal shrugged that away. ‘Whatever. Whoever. We’re owed an explanation.’

  Maddy looked round at the archway. ‘I want to know who precisely set this place up. It couldn’t have just been Waldstein, though. And how long ago? How many teams have been here before us?’ She looked at the others. At Sal. ‘And yeah, maybe you’re right to ask, Sal. Were they really us?’

  ‘What if someone else gets the message?’ said Sal. Maddy hadn’t thought about that. ‘I mean it’ll be out there in a newspaper, right? What if someone else knows to look at that ad?’

  ‘Then we just made a big mistake.’ Maddy looked at Bob warily. ‘What about you, Bob? Any thoughts you want to share on this?’

  ‘It is a logical move to seek to acquire more information, Maddy.’

  ‘You don’t have any secret lines of code, do you? Hmm? Any deeply buried priority protocols that would make you object to us questioning our …’ She was going to say ‘HQ’, but she wondered if this agency even had something like that. ‘… questioning our boss?’

  ‘Negative, Maddy. My highest priority is preserving history and protecting you.’

  ‘You’re not going to suddenly rip our heads off or anything?’

  His horse-lips protruded into something close to a sulky pout. ‘I would not hurt any of you.’

  Liam punched his arm lightly. ‘Don’t worry, coconut-head, we all love you. So, Maddy?’ He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms defiantly. ‘Is this what I think it is, then?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A workers’ strike.’

  She nodded, her mouth set with a determined smile. ‘Too right it is.’ She slurped some of her Dr Pepper from the can. ‘If they … he … Waldstein … whoever wants us to save history again, then we better start getting some answers.’

  Liam nodded, raising his coffee cup. ‘I’ll drink to that.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Sal, lifting a glass of fruit juice. She presented it across the table and the other two clinked mug and soda can with her.

  Bob nodded thoughtfully. ‘Affirmative.’ He looked around. ‘I have nothing to drink … is that required?’

  CHAPTER 12

  2070, Project Exodus, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs

  Rashim took his space on the translation grid, a yard square, as it was for every other personnel slot. Enough of a safety margin to ensure no one became ‘merged’ during the journey. Of course nothing was certain. Rashim knew that better than anyone else standing on the hangar floor. The laws of physics and its predictability had a way of breaking down in extra-dimensional space, or chaos space as the enigmatic Roald Waldstein had once named it.

  There was no knowing if any of them were going to survive this. Worse still, with his estimates of the total mass being translated – his precious mass index – now being more a thumb-in-the-air approximation than a precise figure, they could quite possibly overshoot or undershoot the receiver station. Or – Jesus … it didn’t bear thinking about – they might never even emerge from extra-dimensional space.

  Dr Yatsushita’s voice echoed across over the hangar’s PA system announcing the ten-minute warning.

  ‘Excuse me … no one’s told me anything about what’s going on.’

  Rashim turned to look at a man standing in the floor grid beside him. The floating holographic data block floating above the ground said he was Professor Elsa Korpinkski: Physicist. Clearly he wasn’t her.

  ‘Excuse me, sir! You know what’s happening? What’s gonna happen in ten minutes?’

  The man was wearing olive fatigues – an army corporal by the chevron on his arm. He was one of the last-minute ‘volunteers’ they’d rounded up as they’d sealed and locked down the facility. Effectively ballast, that’s what these last-minute personnel were – equivalent mass for the many empty grid spaces of those candidates who’d failed to make it to the facility in time.

  Although Kosong-ni virus blooms had already been spotted in Denver, and a dozen miles further south in Castle Rock – perilously close given the blooms were airborne – they’d hung on until Vice-president Greg Stilson and his wife had arrived by gyrocopter before the facility’s nuclear blast-proof and airtight concrete doors had swung to, sealing off the world outside.

  The corporal looked round the hangar floor. ‘What’s all these holo-lines and displays for? This some kind of inoculation for that Korean virus or something? That it? This a cure?’

  ‘We’re leaving,’ said Rashim.

  ‘Leaving?’ He wiped sweat off his top lip. ‘What? How? Leaving … what’re you talking about?’

  Rashim could see a name on his pocket: North. ‘We’re all going into the past, Corporal North.’

  ‘The past? What … er … what’s that? You just say past?’ He took a step closer to Rashim, an army boot stepping across the line of his grid square. A soft warning chimed across the PA system. The calm, synthetic female voice of the launch computer system. ‘Proximity warning, grid number 327. Please remain inside your location markers.’

  ‘You need to step back,’ said Rashim, pointing down at his boot. ‘You need to be in your grid.’

  North looked down. Did as he was told. ‘Did you just say … the past? Like –?’

  ‘Yup. Like back-in-time past.’

  The man swore. ‘You telling me this … this is some sort of time machine? But that’s … that’s –’

  ‘A direct violation of international law. Yes, I know.’ Rashim pointed at the glowing holo-projected line hovering an inch above the concrete floor. ‘You should try and remain calm. And at all times, until we have safely translated, you must remain within your grid square. Is that clear?’

  Corporal North looked at the square of light on the floor around him. ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or whatever’s hanging over the line isn’t coming with you.’

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘That or it ends up stuck in the middle of the poor guy in the next square. Just stay still.’

  ‘No one told me nothing. They just grabbed me and a bunch of others out of the compound –’

  ‘Just stay calm and keep still.’

  ‘Dr Anwar?’ Yatsushita’s voice boomed across the cavernous interior. ‘Your figures have been entered and the translation simulation program has approved them as being within an acceptable range of error. Are you ready to proceed?’

  Rashim very much doubted that. However, the program warning could be over-ridden. He just hoped the warning was a marginal amber, as opposed to a blatant flashing red. He nodded back to him.

  Corporal North looked at Rashim. ‘You? You’re in charge of all of this?’

  ‘Uh … yeah. I am, sort of.’

  ‘Field generator is charging,’ announced the PA system. ‘Translation in eight minutes.’

  He looked around at the Exodus group: mostly men, many of them old, a few women and children dotted around; he even saw a newborn baby being placed carefully on the ground. The families of the super-rich. This group should have been three hundred of the world’s brightest minds, young men and women ready to colonize the past and bring with them the best values of the modern world.

  On the far side the platoon of combat units stood perfectly still in their own grids. Genetically engineered soldiers: slabs of muscle and bone in army-green, carbon-flex body armour and helmets and carrying enough ordnance between them to wage a small war.

  Rashim spotted SpongeBubba waddling over towards him.

  ‘Hey, skippa!’ he said with a cheerful plastic smile.

  ‘Bubba, I’m leaving now. You have to get off the translat
ion grid.’

  ‘I know,’ he replied, grinning chirpily. ‘I just came over to say goodbye. Oh, and you have three more messages in your personal in-box. All bills. The first one is a payment reminder from Intercytex Systems –’

  Rashim smiled. The stream had a habit of choking on its own internal mail system. ‘They can wait, Bubba. You better get off.’

  ‘Righto.’

  ‘Oh, Dr Yatsushita will be your owner-operator from now on.’

  For what time he has left.

  ‘I understand. Goodbye, skippa. Have a great trip!’

  ‘Goodbye, Bubba.’

  He watched the yellow lab assistant turn and waddle back towards the cubicles and desks and the blue-green glow of dozens of floating holo-displays.

  ‘Translation in five minutes.’ Dr Yatsushita’s voice. ‘Any non-Exodus personnel must leave the grid immediately.’

  Rashim could hear the growing hum of energy being channelled into the hangar. From the ceiling above he heard the clank of chains and motors as the ‘cage’ was being readied to descend. The cage was a fine wire mesh, a curtain of conductive material that was going to be lowered all the way round the perimeter of the translation grid, like a stage magician hiding his assistant behind a veil before making her vanish. The energy that was going to be channelled through it was much more than the Cheyenne Mountain facility’s generator could handle. They were tapping several other nuclear reactors in Colorado for this, switching whole cities off to make this happen. Lights in Denver were probably winking off right now. Not that anyone still alive outside was going to notice, or even care.

  The image of the liquidized girl from the media feed haunted him; nothing more than a huddle of clothes and pool of dark liquid developing a leathery skin. He wondered how long before the last isolated groups of humankind were infected. Before mankind was completely erased.

  Perhaps without humans, the world will find a way to recover.

  There was something a little comforting about that thought. Cities would descend into rubble and rust, and nature would find a way to rebalance the poisoned air, the toxic seas. To eventually erase every last memory of us. Another failed experiment. The dinosaurs had their time and mankind had his.

  Whose turn next?

  ‘Lowering the energy cage.’

  Rashim looked up and saw the wire mesh shroud slowly winching down, enclosing them all. Those who’d been last-minute stand-ins looked anxiously around them, unfamiliar with the translation process.

  ‘What’s that? What’s coming down?’

  ‘Relax,’ he called out to the corporal. ‘It’s just making a very big Faraday cage round us. Generating a large shoebox-shaped energy field, wrapping us up for delivery.’

  ‘Like a parcel?’

  Others across the hangar floor looked equally startled. Few of those standing among the grid squares had received any briefing at all about the process; even the vice-president had shed his media-friendly calm and was looking around anxiously.

  Rashim smiled. ‘Yes … just like a parcel.’

  He caught one last glance of Dr Yatsushita and exchanged a nod with him.

  Yatsushita mouthed something. Rashim could guess what it was. Don’t let them take over. Then he was lost behind the shimmer of the curtain of fine wire mesh. The whir of motors finally ceased as the mesh touched the concrete floor.

  ‘Energy release in two minutes. Please ensure you are entirely within your grid markings.’

  Rashim looked around and saw everyone else doing likewise, making sure they were standing in the middle of their squares. He was certain that in some cases it didn’t matter how carefully placed they were: they weren’t going to make it through alive. If their body mass varied too much from that of the candidate who should have been standing there, then … well, he had no idea what was going to happen to them. Lost. Turned inside out. He looked at the few children, at the baby squirming on the floor.

  Stupid fools – bringing their children along.

  He’d tapped in wild estimates for some of them.

  ‘One minute until energy release. Please now ensure you are standing as still as possible.’

  He closed his eyes, feeling certain this was all going to end up being a ghastly, bloody mess. Too much haste. Too many fudged, guessed-at numbers. This wasn’t what he’d signed up to either. Oddly, though, oddly … he realized he wasn’t scared. It was not as if there was anything left to lose. Not as if he was leaving behind any family or friends. Not as if he was leaving behind anyone or anything worth crying over. During the last week he’d watched, on a screen, a virus annihilate humankind. Watched it as if it was one of those old disaster movies people used to go to ‘movie theatres’ to see.

  A virus that had erased humankind and nothing else.

  A man-made virus no less.

  We went and did this to ourselves. There seemed to be some satisfying symmetry in that: after screwing up the world, we went and finished the job with ourselves.

  The humming of the field increased and Rashim heard the crackle of energy arcing above their heads across the football-pitch-sized translation grid.

  He heard Dr Yatsushita’s booming voice one more time. Couldn’t make out the words above the deep thrum of energy. He could feel the hairs on his arms lift, then the hair on his head rise with the build-up of static electricity all around him.

  This is it. A goodbye to everything – to the twenty-first century, to a world completely trashed by mankind. A goodbye to nations murdering each other over land, over food, over water … sometimes just over the colour of a person’s skin, a difference in faith, a method of worship, a political opinion.

  As the power surged into the wire mesh and arcs of energy leaped across the translation grid mere inches above their heads, Rashim wondered if mankind really deserved this elaborate cheat, this second roll of the dice. Perhaps the only way to truly learn is to fail … and fail badly. That’s what Kosong-ni was: mankind’s lesson. Mankind’s EPIC FAIL. The few, if any, who survived that were probably going to be far wiser about the future than these people standing around him.

  We made a mess of things … and what do we do? We run away from it.

  He had a feeling all they were doing was rebooting civilization so that it could make the same stupid hash of things all over again. And again.

  And again.

  CHAPTER 13

  2001, New York

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘That tunic hanging up there,’ said Sal to the old lady. ‘Can we just take a closer look at it?’

  ‘The Titanic one?’

  Maddy nodded. ‘That’s it.’

  The old woman pulled a stool out from behind the counter, stood on it, wobbling precariously as she unhooked the hanger from the railing and brought it down for them. She pushed aside a small stack of second-hand books waiting to be priced and made space on the counter, then spread the jacket out carefully.

  ‘It’s almost an antique, you know,’ said the old woman. ‘It’s nearly ninety years old.’ She smoothed her wrinkled hands across the cloth. ‘Older than me even.’ She smiled.

  Maddy and Sal stared down at it for a moment.

  ‘I don’t rent it out for fancy dress. And I really don’t know whether I’d want to sell it.’ She shrugged. ‘Except if the price was right.’

  Sal leaned over it. ‘There. See?’ She pointed to the shoulder of the tunic. Maddy stooped over, adjusted her glasses and peered closely.

  ‘You’re right!’

  It was there. So faint it was missable unless you were looking for it.

  ‘What is it, ladies?’

  ‘A stain,’ said Sal. ‘Red wine or something?’

  The old woman lifted glasses on a chain and propped them on the bridge of her nose. She peered closely at where Sal was pointing. ‘Oh my … you know, I never noticed that before!’

  ‘Can I ask where you got it?’ asked Maddy.

  The old woman straightened up, lifted off her glasses and
let them dangle on her chest. ‘Well now. It was someone’s attic clean-out if I recall. A job lot I bought for this store. A box full of all sorts of dusty old things. Quite a surprise to find this among all the other bits. But you do find gems like this from time to time –’

  Sal pointed towards the shop’s grimy window. ‘What about that bear?’

  The old woman leaned over the counter to see what she was pointing at. ‘On the rocking-chair? The stuffed bear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, I got all those soft toys from a day-care centre … I think.’ She looked back down at the tunic and the faint wine stain. ‘Fascinating. Isn’t it? Something like this … makes history come alive,’ she said to Maddy. ‘Almost like going back in time. You can try and imagine how that stain happened.’ The old woman’s eyes glinted with excitement. ‘Perhaps this crewman was busy delivering a glass of sherry to some duchess when the Titanic hit that iceberg and that’s where the stain came from!’

  Maddy humoured her with a nod. ‘Yeah. That’s kind of cool.’ She noticed Sal was still staring at the soft toys on the rocking-chair. She nudged her gently. ‘Sal?’

  ‘Uh?’ Sal turned back.

  ‘OK?’

  She nodded. Distracted.

  A bell chimed and the shop door opened. A man entered with a tuxedo and a ball gown carefully draped over his arms.

  ‘Ah! Mr Weismuller!’ The old woman stepped from behind her counter. ‘How was your lodge party?’

  ‘Come on,’ said Maddy. She took hold of Sal’s hand. ‘Let’s go.’ She led Sal out. ‘Miss? Thanks for showing us your tunic!’ she called to the old woman as they both squeezed past her customer and stepped outside. But she was already chattering away to him, barely noticing the pair of them leaving.

  Outside on the pavement, Maddy shook her head. ‘My God! You were right. It is … it’s exactly the same!’

  Sal was still looking through the window back at the soft toys on the rocking-chair.

  ‘Sal? What is it?’

  She turned back to Maddy, a smile quickly spread on her face. ‘Nothing. Nothing. Just … uh …’ She changed the subject. ‘See, then? I told you. The tunic … what do you think it means? It means something, right? It definitely means something!’