TimeRiders 05 - Gates of Rome (10 page)

‘
Hell! We’ll give ’em a display of shock and awe all right!
’

Rashim vaguely recognized the catchphrase Stilson and Dreyfuss were using, uttered by some puffed-up presidential moron long ago. Shock and awe. Make them believe the gods have come down to earth! That was basically their plan. Roll right into the middle of Rome, make a ton of noise, intimidate the lot of them and take over the whole show. Simple.

All puff and posture. Smoke and mirrors. Bluffing it to the hilt.

Right up Stilson’s street.

The MCV ahead suddenly lurched upwards and glided over an abandoned cart left in the middle of the road. As they did the
same, Rashim glanced down through the open turret hatchway at the passengers he could see crammed in down below. Approximately fifty of them, standing room only. They swayed queasily as their vehicle rose and dipped alarmingly, like a dinghy riding a rough sea. He was glad he was up here outside and not tucked away down there; he’d have thrown up by now. Hover-transports always made him travel-sick.

‘Sir!’

Rashim turned to the combat unit beside him. He was pointing dead ahead.

He followed the unit’s gloved finger and saw down the arrow-straight cobbled road, flanking rows of evenly spaced, tall, thin cypress trees like a welcoming guard of honour. Beyond them the first faint outline of the city; a long pale wall, and hovering above a sea of terracotta tile roofs that receded into a morning haze, a myriad of hairline threads of smoke from countless cooking fires and kilns, bakers, blacksmiths and tanneries stoked up for a day’s business climbed lazily towards a Mediterranean sky.

Rome.

‘Rashim, you hear me?’

It was Stilson. ‘Yes, I can hear you.’

‘Ready to give ’em a show they’ll never forget, eh?’

Rashim rolled his eyes. The vice-president sounded insufferably excited. ‘You really want to put that, uh … that
music
on?’

‘Goddammit! Yes, of course I do. Stick it on, man. As loud as you can!’

Reluctantly Rashim ducked down inside the hatch and nodded to the combat unit piloting the MCV. ‘Stilson says to put that music of his on now. Loudly.’

‘Affirmative.’

Almost immediately his ears were ringing from chest-thumping decibels of noise booming out of the vehicle’s PA system.
Stilson’s choice of music, downloaded from his personal media digi-cube. Awful-sounding old stuff he called ‘rock music’.

The speakers mounted outside on the front of both MCVs blared and thumped, and a ragged-throated singer was screaming something about being born in the USA …

Maddy set the tray down on the table between them. A strong, milky, sugary, frothy latte for her, and a fruit smoothie for Sal.

‘So?’ said Sal impatiently. ‘What is it about Liam?’

Maddy settled into the booth and leaned over the table, her voice low. ‘So, it’s something Foster told me about him. He’s …’ She shook her head. ‘This is so weird, it’s gonna really mess with your head, Sal.’

‘Jahulla! Maddy! Just tell me!’

‘Liam and Foster … they’re the same.’

She pulled a face. ‘What?’

‘The same. They’re the exact same person.’

Sal turned to look out of the window. There was a market outside: grocers, fishmongers and milling customers. They could have sat outside the cafe; it was certainly warm enough this Monday afternoon, but, with the market going on, far too noisy for their need to talk in hushed whispers.

‘The
same
?’

Maddy nodded. ‘Foster was once Liam.’

Sal’s mouth hung open.
Catching flies
, an expression her mom used to use.

Maddy nodded. ‘That’s right … give it a moment to sink in, Sal. It totally fried my head when Foster first told me.’

‘But what? … So that means …?’ Sal stopped, cocked her
head and frowned, then tried again. ‘Are you saying Foster was young like Liam?’

‘Exactly like Liam.’

‘Foster’s been working for the agency since he was sixteen?’

‘Ahh, yeah, I guess … well, kind of.’

Sal chewed the top of her straw, nibbling ferociously at it. She stopped. ‘So this means Foster was once on the
Titanic
?’

Maddy nodded. ‘I think so.’

‘And he was recruited like Liam was?’

‘I guess.’

‘So then who recruited Foster?’

‘I don’t know … I don’t know!’ She looked down at her hands, playing with the handle of her teaspoon, stirring the frothy coffee unnecessarily. ‘Maybe another Foster?’

‘
Another
Foster?’ Sal looked up at her. ‘Like it’s a loop or something? Like our archway field, but bigger? Looping round and round? Does that mean there are other
us
? Other
you
s and
me
s?’

Maddy shrugged. ‘I’m still trying to figure how this all works. Perhaps it was someone else who recruited Foster.’ She hesitated. ‘Waldstein even?’

‘This is so
chutiya
! This is really scaring me, Maddy. I don’t know what to believe, what to think.’ She laughed. ‘It’s a
chutiya
-crazy idea.’

‘What is?’

Sal shrugged.

‘Come on, Sal. What?’

‘Those two jackets? Liam being Foster?’ She looked up at Maddy. ‘Maybe … this is so totally
chutiya
, but maybe we’ve all been here before.’ A nervous, jittery half-smile flickered on to her face. ‘Maddy, the team that came before us. Do you remember Foster saying there was that team that died?’

Maddy’s coffee was midway between the table and her mouth. It stayed there. ‘Oh my God! You think that was
us
?’

Sal shrugged. ‘My diary … you know my diary?’

‘That notebook you’re always scribbling in, yeah.’

‘There were pages ripped out when I found it.’

‘I thought you
bought
it?’

‘No, I found it in the arch.’ She played with her straw. ‘I found it tucked in my bunk.’

‘And?’ Maddy shook her head. ‘These ripped-out pages …?’

‘I think it might have been
me
writing in the diary before.’

‘Oh …’ was all she could say. Then, ‘I’m not sure I like the sound of this.’

‘Me neither.’

The pair of them stared at each other. ‘We don’t know anything for sure, do we?’ said Sal finally. ‘We’re like little test rats in a lab.’

Maddy nodded. ‘Feels like that sometimes.’

She looked out of the window at the street outside. Not for the first time she wished she could just walk away from all of this; trade places with just about anyone out there on the street.

‘All I know is … I trust you, Sal. And I trust Liam too. As long as we’re honest with each other.’

Sal turned to her. ‘But
you did
keep things from us. The note from San Francisco with that Pandora message. And now this, Liam being Foster. You’ve lied to us! So how can –’

‘I … you’re right.’ Maddy’s eyes dropped guiltily. ‘But I’m done with all the secrets. You know
everything
I know now.’

‘And you said that before too.’

‘Well, this time I mean it, Sal. Seriously. No more secrets. You know what I know.’ She reached out for Sal’s hand, but she pulled it away. ‘Sal?’

‘You seem to have picked up this job, though, Maddy … I
mean really easily. Like maybe you’ve done it before or something. Like maybe –’

‘
Easy?
You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding. You think it’s been
easy
for me? Sheesh …’ Maddy could hear her voice wobbling with emotion. She shut up before that wobble became tears. Pressed her lips and took a deep breath.

Don’t you dare cry, Maddy. Don’t you dare go girly.

She sipped at her coffee, not even wanting it any more. They sat in silence for a while, both watching the market outside for something to do other than look at each other.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Sal eventually.

‘OK.’

‘I was just saying …’

Maddy waved her hand. ‘Forget it. I trust you, Sal. And I trust Liam. We’ve put our lives in each other’s hands, haven’t we? Quite a few times now.’

Sal nodded.

‘And that’s all the three of us have got. Each other. If I don’t even get to have that … then I don’t want to go on doing this. I
can’t
go on doing this.’

Sal reached out and squeezed her hand. ‘I’m sorry, Maddy.’

Maddy puffed her cheeks. ‘’s OK.’ Tainted with guilt, though. There was one more secret she hadn’t shared and maybe now was the time for it to come out.

‘There’s more, Sal. There’s more I need to tell you.’

Sal looked like she didn’t want to hear any more right now. But the proverbial cat was halfway out of the bag. Maddy decided she needed to hear this. ‘Foster’s old, right, Sal? Old. How old do you reckon he is?’

‘I don’t know.’ She hunched her shoulders. ‘
Really
old.’

‘Come on, give me a number.’

‘Seventy? Eighty?’

‘Try twenty-seven.’

The smoothie almost slipped out of Sal’s hands. ‘
What?
’

‘He’s twenty-seven years old.’ Maddy sipped her coffee. ‘So I suppose we can presume from that that he’s been a TimeRider for ten years. The field office, our archway, this agency … has been doing its thing for about ten years’ worth of two-day loop-time.’

That felt about right. The archway had – from day one – felt as if it had been lived in already. Certainly not brand spanking new. Freshly set up. But that wasn’t the thing she needed to tell Sal now.

‘Thing is … the time displacement aged Foster. Every time he went back in time to fix history it was corrupting him, ageing him before his time. And now the same is happening to Liam.’

Sal stared out of the window for a moment. Maddy suspected she already had half an idea something like that was happening to him. ‘His hair?’ she said after a while. ‘That bit of his hair?’

Maddy nodded. ‘Yup … that was a huge jump for Liam. Sixty-five million years. He took a big hit on that one. I hate to think how much of a bite that took out of the time he’s got.’

‘Chuddah,’ Sal whispered. ‘He’s going to die, isn’t he?’

‘Before us … yes … quite probably.’

‘And then?’

Maddy didn’t know what happened then. Perhaps she would one day soon find herself opening a portal on the
Titanic
, wading through freezing water looking for a young steward called Liam O’Connor.

‘I think it’s also hitting you and me,’ she said. ‘Ageing us too.’ She reached a hand up and traced the faintest lines in her skin beside her left eye. She sure as heck wasn’t going to call them ‘crow’s feet’. Old people had those … but that’s what those faint lines were going to become one day. ‘I’ve done a couple of jumps
back, Sal … and I know that it’s affecting me. But I think the archway field that loops us round the two days also has an effect.’

Sal’s eyes were still on the marketplace outside. ‘I thought …’ She turned back to Maddy. ‘I thought we were changing. You and me. I just … I just wasn’t sure if it was my eyes playing tricks on me.’

‘Don’t tell me I’m lookin’ older. I’ll tip my coffee on you,’ said Maddy. She was trying to be funny. It came out sounding lame.

‘Liam must realize it,’ said Sal. ‘Surely he can see it? When are you going to tell him?’

‘I don’t know. When the time’s right.’

‘But it’s obvious now! You have to tell him soon!’

Maddy wondered if Liam was already aware that this was killing him and just putting on a front of not caring. He couldn’t be so thick-skinned not to have noticed anything. ‘Look, I know. I know. It’s just …’ She sighed. ‘I’m just worried that when I tell him he’ll run off and leave us.’

‘But Foster didn’t.’

True.
Sal was right. Once upon a time he was younger, he was Liam, and at some point he learned he was dying. But he stayed at his post, didn’t he? Did his duty.

‘I’ll tell him,’ Maddy said. ‘I’ll tell him soon.’

They sat in silence for a while, both lost in their own thoughts, their own worlds.

‘This doesn’t end well for us, does it?’ said Sal presently. ‘All three of us are going to die, aren’t we?’

‘Everyone dies, Sal.’

‘But we’re going to die soon.’

‘Why say that?’

‘Maddy? Come on. What if
we
are –
were
– the other team? Are we going to get ripped to pieces by a seeker one day? Does
this all happen again and again, going round and round like circles?’

‘Crud, I wish I knew. I wish I could get my head round all of this. Look! Don’t go there. Who knows? Right?’ She took a breath.

‘Anyway, strictly speaking we’re already dead. Or should be.’ Sal looked morose. Maddy could see tears glistening in her eyes, waiting to tumble. She reached across the table for her. She could’ve said something kinder just then.

‘Look. You, me and Liam, we got given an extra helping of life. That’s more than anybody else ever gets. We’ve been so lucky. And think what we’ve already done with that time. What we’ve already seen! And what more stuff we’ll get to see. We can’t waste what we’ve been given … and worry about stuff we can’t possibly predict, you know?’

Maddy realized she needed to take a piece of her own advice. How often had she pined to escape this and be
normal
again?

‘I know. I just … I think I thought, I
hoped
we would go on forever maybe. The three of us and Bob and Becks. Sort of like a family. Like a gang of superheroes or something.’ That first tear rolled down Sal’s cheek and hung from her chin.

‘Nothing lasts forever, Sal.’ Maddy squeezed her hand gently. ‘And superheroes? We certainly aren’t that.’

The man was useless, absolutely useless. There was no denying that. The lion was clearly dying, the fur on its rear flanks matted and dark with blood from a dozen gaping wounds, a gash along its belly from which a loop of entrails was dangling, and still this stupid man had somehow managed to wind up with his head wedged firmly in the lion’s jaws, almost dead now.

No. Not
quite
dead yet. His pale arms thrashed pitifully once again.