‘Yes, Adam, we are time travellers. It will become a viable technology in the not-too-distant future. It will become possible and that’s when everything starts to become messy.’
‘We were recruited by an agency to make sure things stay right,’ added Liam. ‘To make sure any other troublesome buggers with time machines don’t go messing around and changing the course of history.’
Adam frowned. ‘You mean … like, sort of Time Police, or something?’
Maddy nodded. ‘Yeah, sort of like that. Only … things have become a lot more confused than we can handle. We’re …’ She pursed her lips in thought for a moment, then looked at her watch. ‘Look, there’s a lot to tell you, and most of it can wait for later.’
‘Aye,’ said Liam. ‘We’re here because of something you said to Maddy last night.’
‘What?’
‘You were telling me and Becks –’
‘Becks? The other girl?’ He frowned. ‘Your friend seemed … quite intense. She nearly broke my finger.’
‘Oh, now she’s a whole other conversation,’ said Liam.
Maddy was keen to stay on topic. ‘Adam, you told us how you managed to break the code. It was because of that weird pre-Aztec writing you discovered?’
‘Right.’ He nodded eagerly. He gestured at the sheets of paper tacked to the corkboards on his walls. ‘Yes, that. Although it’s not Incan. It’s closer to Mayan if anything. Although the tribe wasn’t strictly Mayan. More like an offshoot of –’
‘The tribe.’ Maddy jumped on that. ‘The tribe … you said their name? What was it again?’
‘Uh? Their name?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, they didn’t have a name as such. Just something I called them. The Windtalkers.’ He shrugged. ‘Seemed like as good a name as any.’
Maddy shot a glance at Liam. See?
‘Who were they? What can you tell us about them?’ asked Liam.
Adam shook his head. ‘Not much. Professor Brian was following rumours about a tribe. It was his pet thing, you know? His hobby. His obsession. To discover a lost people, a lost tribe, and make his name studying them. Apparently some Spanish conquistador bloke encountered a tribe in the Nicaraguan jungle once upon a time. Not called Nicaragua then, of course. I think it was referred to as the Spanish Main back then. Anyway … the conquistador said he saw a golden city. Said they had magical powers or something. Said they were way more advanced than any of the other tribes he’d encountered.’ Adam laughed. ‘It’s the classic “Lost City of Z” cliché. Very Indiana Jones.’
‘This was the tribe? The one you called the Windtalkers?’
He shrugged. ‘I dunno if it was the same tribe who did that cave painting. Might have been.’
‘And so?’ Maddy urged. ‘What? Did your professor find them?’
He looked at her. ‘No. But I found that cave with the symbols on the wall. That’s all. That’s all. But see, that on its own is a pretty significant find. I think the symbols display the structure of a written language, not like the usual thing of pictograms depicting discrete ideas but a proper language: verbs, nouns, adjectives.’ He turned towards his desk and rummaged through the mess. ‘Here … I’ll show you. I’ll show you. Ahhh … here it is.’
He had in his hands several photographs. ‘So, I took some pictures of the writing.’
He held them out for Maddy and Liam to look at. ‘The writing covered a couple of square feet of the cave wall, written quite small and broken into sections just like paragraphs. But there, see? If you look, each “paragraph break” has these uniquely different glyphs at the beginning and end, almost like quotation marks.’
She stared closely at them: spirals followed by a wavy line.
The exact same glyphs that had appeared in the Voynich Manuscript. So unique, so distinctive. She could understand now how they would have leaped out of the manuscript at Adam, the moment he decided to try his hand at decoding the thing. The symbols were like beacons, crying out to be spotted by one particular person. Just like Rashim’s tachyon signals, calling out across time.
‘Adam,’ she said, handing the photographs back to him. ‘There’s a message in the Voynich Manuscript meant specifically for us. But look – you’re gonna love this, this mystery gets better … that particular passage in the Voynich was transcribed from a much, much older document. A document that dates back another thousand years.’
Adam pushed a stray dreadlock away from his eyes. ‘Two thousand years old?’ He chuckled nervously. ‘Jesus time? Uh, so … you’re not going to say what I think you’re going to say?’ He looked at them both. ‘Right? You’re not …’
‘It depends,’ said Liam. ‘What do you think she’s going to say?’
Adam grinned, shrugged, almost wanted to back away from what he was about to say. ‘Maybe, well, I was going to say something like the Dead Sea Scrolls? Something in the Bible … or … or …’
‘Actually, it’s the Holy Grail.’
Adam’s eyes rounded. His eyebrows rose and made a double arch and his jaw hung open. ‘Oh Jesus …’
‘We didn’t manage to crack the message. And I’ll explain why later on. But we think … the answer may lie with this undiscovered tribe of yours. Perhaps even with this cave. Perhaps even in that writing. I don’t know.’ She cocked her head. ‘The reason we came back, Adam, is we need to know where that cave is.’
‘You want to go there?’
‘Uh-huh.’ She nodded. ‘We need to go there. Maybe even … go back in time, maybe even try and speak to these Windtalker people. If we can.’
Adam nodded slowly, stroking his chin thoughtfully. The notion of time travel, messages buried in the Holy Grail, people from the Middle Ages knowing about him … all of it was insane and impossible, and yet equally these pieces seemed to have some cohesion, like a puzzle that might just click together if the other pieces could be found.
Maddy was quite taken with his steadiness. His trembling had subsided. The nervous tics, the darting edginess of the eyes had gone. Now he seemed to be settling into some kind of super-calm meditative state.
‘Adam?’ She was surprised with how he was taking this. It looked like he was coolly piecing it all together. Quite impressive really. Until he ruined that illusion by doubling over at the waist, then dropped down to an untidy, wheezy squat on the floor.
‘Gimme a moment …’ He looked up at them with glassy eyes. ‘Feel a bit light-headed. I … I just need bit of … a bit of air here …’
And then he flopped sideways on to his unmade bed.
‘I think he just fainted on us,’ said Liam.
Maddy knelt down beside him. ‘Yup. We broke him.’
‘We’re taking him back to London with us?’
‘If he wants to come, I guess. What do you think?’
Liam hefted his shoulders. ‘Why not? The more, the merrier.’
‘All right then. We need to bring him round.’ She nodded. ‘There’s a bottle of Coke over there … Let’s pour that on him.’
Chapter 7
1994, Norwich
‘You ready for this?’ asked Maddy.
Adam looked even more pallid in the light of day. His matted ginger dreadlocks and goatee looked almost dark against his ghost-white skin.
‘Not really. This portal thing –?’
‘Is perfectly safe, Adam.’
‘Although, aye, to be fair, it’s very strange,’ added Liam. ‘You might want to keep your eyes closed, so.’
‘Closed? Why?’
Maddy checked her watch. The portal was due to open very soon now. ‘It’s non-dimensional space we’re stepping through, Adam. Looks just like a white mist. Some people – me, for example – find that it’s just too weird to look at. I prefer to just screw up my eyes and jump in.’
‘And you’ll feel like you’re falling,’ added Liam. ‘That takes some getting used to, so it does.’
Maddy checked the alleyway once more; it was a narrow walkway between an
academic bookstore and a coffee shop. An alleyway dotted here and there with flattened shipping boxes, tatters of bubble wrap and discarded cigarette butts. It was deserted. Up at the top, where the alley opened on to a busy street, a gaggle of students passed by, their voices (all talking at once, no one listening) echoed towards them then quickly faded.
‘I’m really … actually going to travel back to Victorian times?’
Liam grinned. ‘Aye. And once we get back we’ll need to dress you right so you fit in better.’ He laughed. ‘Although, God knows what they’ll make of that Medusa hair of yours.’
‘We’ll shove a docker’s cloth cap over his head,’ said Maddy. She turned to him. ‘You’ll love it, Adam.’ She remembered her very first trip back in time to 1906, to San Francisco. The thrill of dressing up. The exhilaration of stepping into real history for the first time. The smells and noises. ‘It’s a bit like stepping into a virtual world, in a way.’
‘Like the Enterprise’s holodeck?’
Maddy nodded. She knew what he meant. That TV series, Star Trek. ‘Yeah, I suppose it’s a bit like the holodeck. But of course it’s all totally for real. No simulation.’ She squeezed his arm. ‘The first time really is something quite special. Nothing to be afraid of.’
Liam looked him over. ‘You got all your bits ’n’ pieces there, Adam?’
He nodded. His backpack was full of his writings, his pictures, his clunky laptop and one or two practical things for their trip to the jungle. But, most importantly, the notes he needed to navigate them to that cliff-face – that cave. ‘Yes. Got all the things I need.’
‘The portal should appear any second now,’ said Maddy, checking her watch once more.
Adam swallowed anxiously. ‘You know … this is really exciting. That is, if I’m not losing my mind and this isn’t actually a big extended dream.’
Liam chuckled and shook his head. ‘I like this fella. He’s funny.’
Bubble wrap at their feet suddenly swirled and skittered in a circle, then a moment later a soft blast of air on their faces made them all blink dust from their eyes.
‘And there she blows! Home again, home again, jiggedy jig,’ sang Liam.
In front of them a sphere of liquid reality hovered above the ground, swirling in indecipherable spirals like thick cream stirred into black coffee.
‘My God!’ whispered Adam. ‘You two ever watch them Terminator movies?’ He giggled nervously. ‘It’s just like … well, a bit like that!’
‘Yup, I know,’ replied Maddy impatiently. ‘So, you just step in, Adam. Step in and you’ll immediately get that falling sensation that Liam mentioned – like you’re falling through the floor of the world. Don’t worry. Don’t panic, that’s totally normal. OK?’
He nodded quickly. ‘Right. No panic. Normal. OK.’
‘I’ll go in first,’ said Liam. He raised a foot and stepped into the undulating sphere. ‘See you back in 1889.’ He merged with the portal, and his body instantly stretched out like melted plastic, swirled and became one with the twisting spiral coffee-and-cream pattern.
‘Oh crap! This is completely mental.’
‘Relax, Adam, we’ve all done this dozens of times. It’s kinda weird, yes, but harmless. You’ll be fine.’
‘Harmless,’ he repeated, nodding quickly. ‘Right. Harmless.’
She patted his shoulder. ‘You next. I’ll jump in right behind you.’
Harmless, Adam. Harmless.
He took a deep breath. ‘Right.’ He raised a foot and dipped it into the sphere as if he was testing the steaming water of a freshly run bath. The toe of his scuffed trainer began to extrude out to a curled point, like a jester’s shoe. The point elasticized, stretched further, long and thin like toothpaste from a tube, like spaghetti, then began to twist into and join the flow of the spiral pattern.
‘Crap! I can’t do this!’ He jerked his foot back out, expecting it now to be drooping like a loop of sausagemeat. It was, of course, quite unaffected: a very normal-looking ankle and foot once more.
‘Honestly,’ said Maddy. ‘It’s better if you just step right in. Like getting into a cold swimming pool. You’re best just jumping in.’
‘Jump in.’ He puffed air again. ‘Right.’
He lifted his foot and stepped into the portal once more, this time letting his body follow; his centre of balance tilted slowly, finally committing him to enter, and he lurched forward into the sphere. The moment his head merged with the boundary of the sphere he found himself staring at a featureless white mist, and then experienced the unsettling sensation of falling.
‘Craaaaaaap!!!!!!!’ His voice, deadened by the fog all around him, filled the swirling silence and seemed to rise in pitch from a human voice to the high-frequency whine of a mosquito.
It seemed to last minutes, or perhaps it was seconds. But, with the tail end of the same breath that he’d started screaming with, he grunted with the sudden impact of his feet against a hard unyielding surface.
The white mist was gone in the blink of an eye and all of a sudden he found himself in the gloomy interior of some brick-and-mortar basement, lit by the unflinching amber glow of a large caged bulb dangling from thick electrical cord. A low brick ceiling overhead. A dark corner with a wooden bench table crowded with a dozen glowing computer monitors, several keyboards and one mouse. A thick, low, arched oak doorway. Wooden packing crates. A loose arrangement of threadbare and worn armchairs around a second table. A net curtain pulled across another corner and the warm, welcoming glow of an oil lamp filtering through the dangling linen.
This place had an almost homely ambience, in a subterranean, Hobbit-like way.
He spotted the young Irishman, Liam, standing nearby, talking to another man, lean and bearded, and a young, dark-skinned girl. Sitting nearby on packing crates was a giant ape of a man, racks of muscle barely contained beneath a stretched cotton smock, and next to him a familiar face: that stunning young woman who’d nearly broken his finger last night. He remembered her name – Becks. She cocked her head curiously, studying him like a pathologist might a viral culture in a Petri dish.
Adam nodded politely as all eyes finally turned and settled on him. ‘Uhh, all right there?’
He felt a puff of air from behind and turned to see Maddy standing there. The portal collapsed behind her.
‘See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?’
Adam shook his head absently. ‘I’m … not sure … I’m not sure any more whether I’ve completely lost my grip on … or … maybe …’
She swept past him, grabbing his arm. ‘It’s all real. Come on.’ She led him across the floor towards the others. ‘Let’s get the introductions out of the way. Then we’ll all go get something to eat and discuss our field trip to this cave of yours.’
Chapter 8
1889, London
Bentham’s Pie Shop (‘Steaming Hot Pies All Day Long!’) was Sal’s find. She’d come across the little eatery on one of her many trips to Exmouth Market. A narrow three-storey building of uneven floors and oak beams askew. Each floor was a maze of nooks and crannies and cosy side rooms, each room filled with wooden tables and stools that wobbled on the undulating bare floor. They were sitting in a lead-lined bay window on the top floor, looking down through fogged glass on to the narrow street and a busy fishmonger below.
Inside Bentham’s it was quiet now. The breakfast rush of early-morning pie-eating patrons had subsided and the lunchtime rush was yet to come.
The seven of them were crowded around one small table, and the perforated, oven-browned pie crusts spilling small smokestack plumes of beef-flavour steam into the air made the pie feast between them look like a miniature table-top village of round houses.
‘Smells good,’ said Adam. ‘I haven’t eaten anything warm in days.’
‘The meat is real beef,’ said Rashim, plunging a fork into his crust. ‘Not synthetic protein jelly but actual meat.’
Liam made a yummy sound as he hung his nose over his own pie. ‘I
’m starving, so I am.’
‘All right. I suppose I better start,’ said Maddy, ‘since this was all my big idea.’ She tapped her fingers together. ‘Becks – who you now know, Adam, is a support unit – dumped out a whole load of data and what we got from it, all we got from it, was the word “Windtalkers”. So that’s why we came to get you, Adam. That’s the only lead we have here.’
‘A lead to cracking that message –’ Adam glanced at Becks – ‘in her head?’
‘Yup. So, the truth is we’ve found ourselves kind of cast adrift from the agency that set us up in the time-policing business.’
‘Cast adrift?’ Liam shook his head. ‘That’s putting it mildly. More like “hiding from them for fear of our lives”.’
‘All right, we’ve gone and done something that’s made the agency want us all dead for some reason.’ Maddy shrugged. ‘I think it’s because I made the mistake of asking what the hell “Pandora” was.’
‘You didn’t just ask,’ said Sal. ‘You sent a message saying we weren’t going to correct any more contaminations until someone gave us an answer. That was pretty stupid, saying it like that. You made us sound like we were turning against them.’
Maddy did a double-take at Sal. It was so unlike her to lash out like that. She’d been withdrawn and quiet recently, more so than normal. Then this – there was even the tone of a direct challenge in her voice. So unlike her.
‘Well, yes … I might have worded it a bit better, I guess,’ she replied. ‘And, so, because I made it sound like they had a problem with us – sorry, guys – we ended up with a squad of goons, like Bob here, knocking on our door intent on massacring us. A slight over-reaction, I think. But there you go. Something obviously got lost in the translation. They figured we’d gone rogue. But more than that … I think we clearly weren’t meant to know anything about Pandora.’
‘And this Pandora is …?’ asked Adam.