Time Riders: The Doomsday Code (8 page)

Becks blinked rapidly several times, then her head cocked on one side, curious. ‘I appear to have two minutes thirty-two seconds of unlogged time.’ She turned to Maddy. ‘Did I malfunction in any way?’

The air in front of them pulsed, stirring plastic bags and newspapers into chasing each other in the dark. Ahead she could see the shimmering forms of their colleagues: Sal waving, Liam doing bunny ears behind her head.

‘No, you’ve been just fine, Becks. Perfectly fine. Let’s go home, shall we?’

Adam’s hand throbbed. The tall girl with the surprisingly strong grip hadn’t in fact broken his finger, just stretched the tendons in his hand. Not broken, but still incredibly painful. Under normal circumstances it would have been painful enough for him to take himself to the campus walk-in surgery for a splint or icepack and some serious painkillers, but he was distracted enough that the throbbing in his finger was, for the moment, ignorable.

It can’t be
. That’s what his mind was muttering to itself.
It just can’t be
.

‘
What we’ve got to do is get back home to 2001.
’ That’s what the girl with the glasses had said while he’d stood in the bathroom, holding his breath and listening to them. ‘
Then I’ll send a warning message into the future, to 2056.
’

He’d nearly laughed out loud at that. If he had, it would have been the shrill humourless laugh of someone losing their mind. Because this – the stuff they were saying – it was plain crazy, right? Because … because 2001 was seven years from now. 2001 was the future.

Mission Control to Adam
, his mind chastised him,
are you about to tell yourself that they’re time travellers? Is that it? Have you really gone that insane?

He nodded and chuckled to himself. ‘Yes … that’s it. Maybe I’ve gone completely mad.’ He was halfway to accepting that was what was wrong with him. His two visitors, his throbbing finger, all of it, were just elements of a paranoid delusion. After all, he’d been hiding out in this room for nearly a week, living like a hermit. Beginning to see things.

He decided that the sensible little voice in his head was most probably right, that this was a sign it was time to go see a campus councillor. And maybe, just maybe, he or she could explain to him in a perfectly rational way how come he’d found a message, written in modern English, in a document nearly a thousand years old; how come he was imagining visitations from time-travel girls from the future.

He laughed at how crazy it all sounded.

He was just about ready to admit he’d gone completely insane and help when he noticed a twist of paper on his bed where the girl –
Maddy, that’s the name; that’s what your hallucinated visitor called herself, wasn’t it?
– had placed her jacket. He reached over tentatively to pick it up, hoping it was just one more example of his mind playing tricks on him and it would vanish in a puff of delusion before he even managed to touch it.

Only it didn’t.

‘Errr … Adam to Mission Control … it’s, uhh … it’s …’ he muttered, turning the twist of coloured paper over in his hand. ‘This is real? Right? I’m not hallucinating
this
, am I?’

Mission Control had nothing useful to add at this point in time.

He looked closely at the paper in his hand. It was a ticket stub. An entry ticket to what appeared to be a nightclub or a bar or something. The address was West 51st Street, New York. What’s more, it had a date and an admission time stamped faintly like ticker-tape along the bottom.

20:21 – 09-09-2001.

All of a sudden he felt light-headed: dizzy and queasy, excited and terrified all at the same time. He looked again at the faintly printed time and date: 9 September 2001, seven years from now, the girl who’d just left his room was going to go to this New York nightclub.

It was one thing too many for him. He lost balance and flopped face forward on to his mattress.

Outside he heard the clump of boots on the stairs and a moment later a heavy fist on his door. ‘Hey, Adam! Who were those girls?’ Lance’s voice sounded far away; it sounded utterly inconsequential.

‘Suit yourself … you stay in there, you little freak. But tell your weird freak friends not to come round so late next time, right?’

Adam heard none of that. He was already busy mapping out the next seven years of his life.

‘All right, stand clear, everyone!’

Sal crouched down and thumbed an icon on the growth tube’s small glowing touchscreen. A motor softly whirred at the bottom of the perspex tube and it slowly tilted backwards to a forty-five degree angle. A moment later the bottom of the tube opened and a flood-tide of foul-smelling gunk splashed out on to the floor of the back room.

Bob’s glistening, baby-smooth body slipped out of the tube and across the floor like a freshly landed blue marlin on the foredeck of a fishing boat.

‘It’s a boy!’ announced Liam.

‘This time round,’ added Maddy.

The newly birthed clone stirred on the floor, grey eyes opening and gazing up at them. They crouched around him,
cooing
like proud parents. ‘Liam,’ said Liam, pointing to himself. ‘My name’s Liam.’

The clone opened his mouth and vomited a river of pink gunk down the front of his muscular chest.

‘Oh, that’s our Bob all right,’ said Sal.

‘Negative.’ Becks squatted down to inspect the slimy naked body on the floor. ‘The AI designated “Bob” has yet to be uploaded.’

‘She’s right,’ said Maddy. ‘It’s not our old buddy yet. Just a meat combat unit.’

‘Og gub ber smuh,’ gurgled the clone in agreement.

‘And just as moronic as he was last time,’ she added. ‘Come on, let’s get him cleaned up and dressed, then we can get the software upload started.’

Liam placed a hand under one bulging arm, Becks the other and together they helped him to his feet. Liam winked at the bewildered-looking giant. ‘Welcome back, Bob.’

Half an hour later, hosed down and no longer stinking like a pile of rotten meat, dried and dressed in a mix-and-match collection of oversized clothes, Bob sat motionless on Liam’s bunk. His eyelids flickered rapidly as terabytes of data filled the empty silicon wafer embedded in his skull. Becks was overseeing the software transfer process while Maddy had called the other two to join her around the kitchen table.

‘So you see … we’ve got to at least go and take a look. Make sure this Voynich Manuscript isn’t going to totally give the game away.’ She shrugged. ‘It isn’t going to be a particularly secret agency much longer if one of our teams is blabbing away all our secrets in that document. Right?’

Liam nodded. ‘Sure.’

‘Does that mean Liam might meet another “operative” like himself?’ asked Sal.

Maddy shrugged. ‘It’s entirely possible he’ll make contact.’ She turned to him. ‘And, if you do, then obviously the most important thing you need to communicate is that they
can’t
use the Voynich Manuscript any longer. It’s been compromised, OK?’

‘Right.’

‘So …’ Maddy consulted a pad of paper on the table. ‘So the time we’re sending you back to, Liam, is 1194 – that’s when this Adam Lewis said the document carbon dates to.’ She looked up from her notes. ‘I don’t think carbon dating can be
that
precise … but it’s a specific year to aim for. And we’re sending you to a place called Kirklees. That’s in England.’

‘Ahh now, I’ve been to England before. With me uncle and me dad, so.’

‘A place called Kirklees Priory. I did a search on it. It’s famous because it’s the place where Robin Hood died and was buried. Supposedly.’

Liam’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Robin Hood, did you say?’

Maddy laughed at his response. ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Liam. From what I’ve pulled up, there seems to be a lot of evidence that Hood’s just a myth: a story made up from a whole bunch of different sources. From old Saxon-aged myths to, like, seventeenth-century highwayman stories.’

‘Oh.’ His face dropped. ‘And there was me hoping to become one of his Merry Men.’

‘Sorry. Now, listen closely. Historical records show this is a dangerous time. The king of England is Richard and he’s abroad fighting some crusade. At home, there’s a lot of unrest and stuff – bandits, anarchy, that kind of thing. So for safety I’m going to send
both
support units along with you, OK?’

Liam smiled. ‘I’ll be fine, then. Me own little army.’

‘And, remember, all this is a quick look-see. If you can, I want you to find who or what “Cabot” is, and talk to him. See if you can find out
who’s
writing this Voynich Manuscript, and if it’s another team like us then you’ve got to make contact and warn them that the code’s been broken, right?’

‘Aye.’

‘A secondary objective, Liam – if you can locate the manuscript, or come across whoever’s writing it – is … if you can, find out how to decode that manuscript so we can see what
else
is in it.’ She glanced at both of them. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being totally in the dark about this agency. I want to know more, and if there’s more we can find out …’

‘Yeah,’ said Sal. ‘I want to know too.’

The three of them were quiet for a moment.

‘I don’t know where this is taking us,’ said Maddy. ‘History has been changed a little. There’s a movie out there that wasn’t there yesterday. And maybe that’s all that’s going to happen with this time wave and we don’t need to correct things again. As Foster once said, history can tolerate
some
change. Maybe this Adam guy got lucky with those couple of sentences, and that’s all anyone is ever going to get out of the manuscript. But I think we have to just take a look. Agree?’

Liam nodded. ‘It’s the time of knights an’ all. I wouldn’t mind seeing some of that.’

‘Cool. So … when Bob’s ready, Sal, I want you, Liam and the two units to go locate some clothing that’ll not attract attention. God knows what they wear then,’ she said, shrugging, ‘potato sacks and sandals, for all I know.’

‘OK. What about you?’

‘I need to put together a data package for Bob and Becks so they’re, you know, up to speed on all the relevant history.’ She looked at her watch. ‘It’s just gone ten. If we say launch time after lunch?’ She nudged Liam. ‘Might as well get some pizza in before you go.’

He was watching the row of archways, not entirely certain which one they’d disappeared into last night. He’d let them get too far ahead, they’d turned into that backstreet and, by the time he’d arrived and looked down past the wheelie bins and bags of festering rubbish, they were nowhere to be seen.

Nerves had got the better of him; he’d allowed himself to fall too far behind.

He could have gone down there, knocking on each shutter door, but he’d wimped out. Back at his apartment in the early hours, unable to sleep as New York finally stilled itself for a new Monday morning, he’d paced his living room angry with himself. Seven years of waiting for this moment; seven years waiting to talk to the girl again – and he’d wimped out and lost them down this street.

In all that time he’d played the memory of that night in his bedsit over and over in his head, trying to understand what it had been about. Trying to keep the memory of their faces fresh and vivid. Preparing himself to accept the possibility that this was for real, that that little ticket stub was actually going to reunite him with someone who’d travelled across time.

Adam had called work this morning, told them he was feeling poorly. Told them he might not be in for a couple of days. Sherman–Golding Investment would cope just fine without their IT systems security consultant for a couple of days.

Seven years. It felt like a lifetime ago, those unhappy university years. He’d never kept in touch with those moronic beer-heads he’d shared digs with. Couldn’t care less what they were doing now. Because he was doing just fine. A nice Manhattan apartment, a gold American Express card, membership of an exclusive gym that overlooked the Hudson. He earned more money a year than his old man earned in a decade. And all he was really was a hacker in a smart suit.

But then this life, this career, everything he’d planned and done since he was twenty-one, had been so he’d end up here in New York, so he could be there at
that
club on
that
night. His whole career, his life, governed by the faint print on a crumpled stub of coloured paper.

Totally mental.

Now, watching this little backstreet in the morning, Mr Sensible urged him to make a move.
Mission Control to
Adam, time to go and say hello now, don’t you think?

The thought sent butterflies fluttering in formation around his gut.

Come on, Adam, you’re a confident man now. Not that nerdy little weasel, not any more. Right? A player. Not a loser – a WINNER! And winners don’t sit around whining.

He nodded. ‘Right.’

Mission Control says we’re good to go. Time to go.

It was then that he saw them. Four of them emerging from one of the archways. He spotted the tall girl who’d twisted his finger nearly out of its socket. Looking no different. Wearing exactly the same clothes she’d been wearing that night – the very same clothes she’d been wearing seven years ago … and it looked like she’d not aged a day! With her was a small Asian girl, thirteen, maybe fourteen. A young man perhaps a couple of years older, and next to him a giant of a man. He had to be seven foot tall, at least a yard across the shoulders and over two hundred pounds of muscle.