‘Jesus,’ whispered the old man, his croaky voice shaking.
CHAPTER 72
2001, New York
They stared at the naked body oating amid the pink-red soup of liquid in the plastic cylinder.
‘Wil the support unit survive?’ asked Sal.
‘Becks,’ said Liam quietly. His voice lit le more than a gentle croak. ‘Her name is Becks.’
The soft glow of red light coming from the base of the birthing tube was the only il umination in the back room. It was enough for Maddy to see the lost expression of posttraumatic stress on Liam’s face. ‘She’l live,’ said Maddy with the hesitant smile of someone not real y sure. ‘Bob said their combat frames can sustain roughly a seventy-ve per cent blood loss and stil be able to recover from that, given enough time.’ She glanced at the shredded remnants of the female unit’s left lower arm. Almost al the soft tissue had been clawed away leaving a skeletal forearm surrounded by tat ers of skin and tendon that oated and swayed in the gloop like so many ends of frayed rope.
‘Unlike Forby,’ said Cartwright sombrely.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Maddy. ‘He seemed, like, you know …
like a good guy.’
The old man nodded thoughtful y. ‘The best. The very best.’ He sighed. ‘Family man too.’
best.’ He sighed. ‘Family man too.’
The only sound in the back room was the gentle purring of the tube’s ltration system. Maddy had shut down the generator to conserve the half a tank of fuel they had left. There was no need for the generator to be chugging away right now; a row of steady green LEDs showed the displacement machinery was ful y charged and ready to use again. She’d shut everything else down, the computer systems, the lights, the other birthing tubes and the fridge containing the other embryos … they’d keep in their cryotubes for a few more hours without refrigeration.
‘So how long?’ asked Laura, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. ‘You know? Until she’s al bet er again?’
Maddy looked up at the girl. She could imagine her in another time, con dent and popular in her high school, a baton-twiddling cheerleader, everyone’s favourite, always invited to parties, always surrounded by friends and acolytes. That Texan accent – the con dent bray of someone who’d never need to question her place in the world … Wel , she didn’t look quite so much like a future Homecoming Queen now. Even in this muted light Maddy could see how badly a ected she was by the portal’s corrosion e ect. Her face looked ghostly pale, the esh around her eyes dark and it seemed her nose was stil leaking a steady trickle of blood: a ruptured blood vessel somewhere inside that quite possibly might never heal. The boy, Edward Chan, seemed to have fared only slightly bet er.
Apparently, according to Chan, there’d been another girl Apparently, according to Chan, there’d been another girl with them, but she’d been jumped by one of those things just before she could reach the portal. If she’d su ered the same fate as Forby, then Maddy could only hope her death had been as merciful y quick. Although, after what she’d witnessed only half an hour ago, merciful felt entirely like the wrong word to use. She watched Chan’s large round eyes staring at the mush of organic soup, at the foggy gure of the support unit inside. Both these two, Chan and the girl, seemed to be in a deep state of shock, wel beyond grieving for a lost classmate. Liam said there’d been others, sixteen of them had survived the blast back in time. Only these two plus Liam and Becks had made it. God knows what they’ve been through.
‘How long?’ asked Chan again.
‘About four and a half hours,’ Maddy replied. ‘Four and a half hours and her condition should be stable. She’l have replenished enough blood to function again.’
‘What about her arm?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘I don’t know whether this healing thing actual y regrows limbs and stu . Bob, our computer system, just told me she’d be able to repopulate blood cel s. We’l see, I guess.’
Liam’s eyes came back from far away and met hers.
‘You said … function again?’
She nodded. ‘She has to go back, Liam. You know that. There are loose ends that need xing.’
The others looked at her. It was clear to her that she was the only one doing any strategic thinking here, was the only one doing any strategic thinking here, thinking beyond the moment.
That’s your job, Maddy. Team strategist … remember?
‘She has to go back and correct what happened … what it is that’s made the present the way it is.’
‘It’s those creatures, isn’t it?’ said Cartwright. ‘The ones that came through your portal … they’re the thing that’s di erent?’
Maddy turned to Liam. ‘Liam, is that –?’
Oh my God.
She hadn’t noticed it before. In fact, she had, but she’d thought it was a streak of dust, or perhaps a dusting of some exotic jungle pol en. Looking at Liam right now, even in the dim crimson glow of the birthing tube, she could see a shock of white hair on his left temple. And his left eye … the white of it mot led with the web-like blur of a burst blood vessel.
‘Yes …’ he said after a few moments, not registering the look on her face. ‘Yes … those things, they learned a few tricks from us.’
‘There’s more?’ asked Sal.
He nodded. ‘Yeah … thirty or forty, I suppose. A pack of them.’ His eyes remained on the outline of Becks’s form, curled up like a foetus. In her sleep, vulnerable-looking –
just a teenage girl. ‘She managed to kil some of them, but the rest are back there.’
Maddy looked at Sal and Cartwright. ‘Then those hunters across the river, they must be distant ancestors. They’re somehow linked, right? The long heads?’
They’re somehow linked, right? The long heads?’
Cartwright nodded. ‘It’s an unusual con guration.’ He stroked his chin. ‘No … it’s a unique con guration.’
Maddy had lifted the shut er door brie y after they’d seen to Becks and shown Liam and the other two the jungle that now replaced New York. The hunters were no longer probing the riverbank for mud creatures and had returned to the set lement on the far side of the broad river.
‘They’re descendants, Liam,’ she said. ‘Distant … very distant descendants.’
‘And their ancestors,’ cut in Cartwright, ‘must have learned something from you … something that enabled them to survive and prosper. Something, some sort of skil , that helped them survive the K–T event, whatever wiped out the dinosaurs.’
Liam nodded slowly. She could see he’d worked that much out already. ‘So … someone has to go back and kil the whole pack.’
‘Yes,’ said Maddy, reaching a hand out and holding his arm gently. ‘They can’t be al owed to live and develop any sort of intel igence that could save them. They should have died out with al the other dinosaurs.’
‘OK.’ He took a deep breath. ‘OK … I’l go –’
‘No,’ she said, a lit le too quickly. She tried not to let her stare at his bloodshot eye linger. ‘Not you, Liam. You need rest.’
‘If not me, then who? No one else –’
‘The support unit.’
‘The support unit.’
‘Becks?’ He shook his head. ‘No. She’l take days to recover, surely. And she’l not be able to face them al on her own. They’l kil her, to be sure.’
Her? She?
She held his arm. ‘Listen to me, Liam.’ She nodded at the birthing tube. ‘I know you’ve been through a lot together, but remember … it’s just a support unit in there. A meat robot. A tool for the job. That’s al it is. It’s expendable.’
‘I’l go with her,’ he said.
‘No.’ Maddy shook her head rmly. ‘No. You can’t go back there again.’
‘Why?’
He doesn’t know, does he? He hasn’t looked into a mirror. He hasn’t realized how much damage going so far back in time has already done to him. She wondered why he hadn’t yet noted the condition of the girl and C
han. Both looked like people su ering from advanced radiation sickness. But then … from his time, Liam wouldn’t know anything about radiation sickness. Perhaps he at ributed the bleeding noses, the pal id complexion to shock. Perhaps he was too much in shock himself to have noticed.
‘Because you’re too valuable to lose, Liam. We need you here.’
‘We need you,’ added Sal, ‘and …’ Her face dipped out of range of the soft peach glow and in the darkness they heard movement, a scrape, the heavy thud of something metal ic and the rat le and tinkle of a buckle. Her face metal ic and the rat le and tinkle of a buckle. Her face returned and she held up something that glinted in the dul light. ‘And she’d have this gun, Liam. Not just a bamboo stick.’
Maddy nodded. ‘You saw how good it was earlier.’
‘High-calibre MP15 assault ri e,’ said Cartwright. ‘It’l mince those monsters up no problem.’
‘We’l give her a few hours to rebuild herself. OK?’
‘I’l uhh … I’l go and see how many clips of ammo Forby has … had,’ said Cartwright.
Maddy pressed out a smile, and nodded. ‘You do that.’
She turned back to Liam, watching the oating body of Becks. She could see he felt something for the support unit, that they’d bonded in the past … that this time, unlike last time, if the support unit fel , there’d be no one to retrieve its AI, no one to dig the computer out of its cranium and bring it back.
Be the leader, Maddy. There’s no discussion here. It’s decided.
‘Sorry, Liam, she has to go,’ she said forceful y. ‘That’s how it is. She has to do this. We need New York back; we need our power feed back before we run out of fuel. Anyway …’ She glanced at the silhouet e of Cartwright shu ing cautiously out through the doorway by the light of a wind-up torch. She lowered her voice. ‘Anyway, there’s going to be one more job for you to do before we’ve dug ourselves out of this whole freakin’ hole.’
CHAPTER 73
2001, New York
Liam watched the sun set ing across the river, picking out thin skeins of smoke from the set lement perched on the muddy banks on the far side. He saw several pinpricks of light in the middle of the round huts.
Fire. One of the earliest markers of intel igence. He wondered how many aeons ago this descendant species had learned they could control it, use it. A far cry from the primitive animal fear for it demonstrated by their ancestors.
He heard the shut er rat le as Maddy stooped under it and joined him outside. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Tired.’ Squat ing against the outside brick wal of their archway, watching the jungle turn dark and the sky’s rich palet e change from crimson to violet, he realized how ut erly spent he felt. Final y, after two weeks of nervous tension, two weeks of fearing something primal, savage and hungry could snatch him away at any time … here he was, somewhere safe at last. Somewhere he could close his eyes for a moment and actual y, properly, rest.
‘She’s nearly ready,’ said Maddy. ‘We’re prepping the portal to take her back to one minute after we closed the portal to take her back to one minute after we closed the last one. Those creatures should stil al be gathered there, scratching their heads and wondering where you went.’
‘How is she?’
‘The arm looks like it’s begun repairing itself. I noticed there’s some new muscle tissue. No skin yet. I presume that regrows at some point. Anyway, Sal’s bound her arm and hand in bandages to protect it.’
‘How is she?’ he asked again. ‘Can she do it?’
‘She says she can operate to forty-seven per cent functional capacity.’ Maddy smirked. ‘And she’s real y rather pleased about the weapon.’
Liam laughed softly. ‘Just like Bob.’
‘They could be brother and sister.’
‘Wel , they are … I suppose.’
‘True.’
Liam nodded towards the vil age. ‘It feels wrong, in a way.’
‘What?’
‘What we’re doing … kil ing the rest of that pack. I mean, look what they became.’ He shook his head and laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘I’m almost proud of them, so I am. They’re like, I suppose … I feel like they’re sort of my creation. We showed them how to build a bridge, how to use a spear. And, after Lord knows how many thousands of years …’
‘Mil ions actual y.’
‘… mil ions of years, they’ve become this. A brand-new
‘… mil ions of years, they’ve become this. A brand-new intel igent race and here we are, going to wipe them al out. What’s that word for it?’
‘Genocide?’
‘Aye, that’s it … like that Hitler tried to do to the Jews. And we’re going to do it to those things. They’re not just dumb animals, Maddy. They were clever back in the jungle, you could see that. Very clever, and now here they are just as smart as us humans.’
‘No, Liam, they’re not. Something that old man, Cartwright, said …’
‘What?’
‘Ask yourself this: just how long have they been at this stage of development? Hmm? They could have got this far
– canoes, spear, huts an’ al – mil ions of years ago and yet
… and yet this is as far as they ever got.’ She gazed at the distant vil age. ‘Otherwise, why aren’t they walking around in smart suits and talking on cel phones?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe they did once. Maybe mil ions of years ago they were that smart, and this place was a big city like New York.’
‘And what? They chose to become savages again?’
‘Who knows? Maybe they had some sort of war? Maybe they once had an incredible civilization that eventual y col apsed into ruins. Or some doomsday weapon wiped them out but for a few poor bloody survivors.’
Maddy nodded. ‘It’s possible, I guess. A lot can happen in sixty-ve mil ion years.’
‘Aye, and who’s to say it doesn’t one day happen to us
‘Aye, and who’s to say it doesn’t one day happen to us too, eh? And soon.’
She looked at him. ‘Kramer’s time?’
‘Foster’s time, perhaps. You remember the things he told us about the future? The dark times ahead. Al that global warming, the ooding, pol ution and the poisoned seas … the starving bil ions?’
She did. It was a future she’d thought she was beginning to see in her lifetime. That big meeting in Copenhagen that was supposed to be the last best chance for the world to agree on how to stop global warming – it had failed miserably. She wondered whether historians from midway through the twenty-rst century would point to that day as the very beginning of the end.
‘Wel … that’s the future whether we like it or not, Liam. And it’s our job to ght to keep it that way.’
He nodded. ‘Hmm … but do you ever wonder, Maddy?’
‘Wonder what?’
He looked at her, with his bloodshot eye and thin shock of snow-white hair, and for a moment he looked both old and young at the same time. ‘Do you wonder whether that future, the one Foster told us al about, whether that’s the right future to ght for?’
‘I dunno. I suppose we just have to trust him that it is.’
The sun dipped behind the far horizon of trees, behind the thin lines of camp re smoke. From inside the arch they could hear the voices of the others: Sal helping the support unit … Becks … get ready.
‘She’s been given orders to kil them al , then destroy
‘She’s been given orders to kil them al , then destroy your camp. Burn everything so there’s nothing left behind to leave fossil traces. We’l know if she’s successful –’
Maddy nodded out at the jungle – ‘when this al goes and we get New York back, and …’ She lowered her voice a lit le. ‘And the tricky situation we were stuck right in the middle of just before jungle-land arrived …’
‘Cartwright?’
She nodded.
‘So …’ He cocked a brow. ‘I’m presuming
he, and the poor fel a with the gun, are the chaps who found our message?’
‘Not exactly. It was found a lot, lot earlier. In the 1940s, apparently. But Cartwright runs this lit le government agency,’ she snorted, ‘an agency a bit like ours, I guess –
smal and secret. Its job for the last sixty years has been to be a custodian of your message. And to nal y make contact with us in 2001.’
‘And he came knocking?’
‘Oh, he came knocking al right. Just before the last time wave, we had men with guns standing guard outside in the backstreet. In fact, they had several areas of the neighbourhood sealed up with roadblocks and soldiers and stu . Helicopters overhead and everything. Quite a big deal. You’d have loved it.’
‘My fault.’ Liam looked guilty. ‘Sorry about that.’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t be. You had to send the message. There was no other way we would have found you.’
you.’
Sal was cal ing out for her. It was time.
‘Thing is, Liam,’ she said hurriedly, ‘we have to be ready to move, and move quickly. If Becks is successful … we’l get al of that situation right back in our faces. We’l be right where we were. So, I’m going to need to send you back to make sure they don’t get your message.’
‘Dinosaur times?’
‘Oh no. Not that far.’ She managed to stop herself saying because that would probably nish you o . ‘No … it’l be the second of May 1941. You need to prevent some kids from nding a particular chunk of rock.’
He smiled. ‘And Cartwright and his agency wil never have existed?’
She was ducking down under the shut er when she paused. ‘Wel … his agency might not exist, or maybe it wil , but it wil be busy with some other secret it’s trying to keep from the American people.’
‘Right.’
‘When that time wave comes, Liam … we’l need Cartwright standing outside when I turn on our time eld. His life wil be rewrit en along with the rest of the corrected reality. He’l have no memory of al of this.’
Liam bent down and looked under the shut er and into the archway. He could see Forby’s dark boots poking out of the end of the blanket they’d wrapped his body in.