by Alex Scarrow
She shrugged a ‘Whatever’ at him.
‘Now,’ he said, nodding at the paper in her hands. ‘There’s a code there. Maddy seems to think you might know how to decipher it.’
She looked down at the numbers, a meaningless jumble of digits that meant absolutely nothing to her at first glance. But then, very quickly, the pattern began to speak to her. Groups of three numbers, the first into the hundreds, the second being numbers no greater than thirty-five and the last seeming to peak at numbers no greater than fifteen, sixteen. She knew exactly what that was.
‘It’s some kind of a book code.’
‘Clever girl. But now, here’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question. Which book?’
She scanned to the bottom of the numbers and saw the last word of the message.
Magic.
Magic? What the jahulla sort of a clue was tha-?
She looked up at him, a smile slowly spreading across her face. Of course, if Bob had it in his database, so the duplicate AI in the female support unit would also.
‘You know, don’t you?’ said Cartwright.
‘Uh-huh.’ She was almost tempted to tell him the book’s title anyway, since it wasn’t going to be published for another few years yet. Instead she attempted to suppress an irresistible urge to giggle.
The old man sighed patiently. ‘Well, you could, of course, just tell me. Which would be far more pleasant for the pair of us. Or we have a medicine cabinet full of interesting drugs I can pump into you. Some of them with some quite horrific side effects. And failing that there’s always the old-fashioned way.’
‘You take us back to the archway,’ she said, ‘and I’ll decode the rest of this message for you.’
He shook his head. ‘Hmm, now see, my concern is that we get back into that archway of yours and one of you kids’ll shout out something else, and — pop! — you and all that machinery vanishes in a puff of twinkly time travel sparkles and smoke.’
‘She hasn’t told you yet, has she?’
He frowned. ‘Told me what?’
Sal’s smile widened, a nervous twitchy smile. ‘That’s actually really funny.’
‘Funny?’
She nodded. ‘Funny.’
‘Why? What’s funny?’
‘She’s playing with you. How long have I been in here?’
‘Why?’
‘Please… tell me how long?’
He looked down at his watch. ‘A few hours. Why?’
‘Exactly. Please.’
‘Five hours… five and a half hours.’
She giggled again. ‘You don’t have much time left, then.’
The last of the congenial expression was lost from his rumpled face. ‘Stop messing around and tell me what the hell you’re talking about!’
‘Sure,’ she said amicably. ‘Our computer system is locked down for six hours. After that, it’s got orders to totally brick itself if Maddy doesn’t give it another codeword.’
‘Brick?’
‘Fry all the data. All the machinery. Everything.’
His bushy eyebrows both arced, and beneath his jowls his jaw began grinding away again.
‘You ready to take us back now?’ asked Sal politely. ‘I’ll even say “please”.’
CHAPTER 60
65 million years BC, jungle
Broken Claw looked at the others in his family pack, predator eyes meeting predator eyes. In his claws he was still holding the bamboo spear, the bloodied end of it embedded in what was left of the new creature.
His mind worked hard trying to understand what he’d done. Trying to comprehend the fact that it wasn’t his claws that had ended this pale creature’s life, but the long device that he was holding, something other than him. Something he controlled. Something he had… used.
He turned to the others, clicked and growled and mewled softly.
Do you see? We killed the new creature with this.
Their minds, all younger, less developed. His children stared, yellow eyes burning with hatred, but not quite understanding, not just yet.
But he did. And his older, wiser mind stretched a little further. This long stick he held, he understood now what it was and where it came from. They grew along the river in thick clusters. But now it was no longer simply a plant — the new creatures had fashioned it into something else entirely: a deadly weapon.
Something deep in his reptilian mind shifted. Concepts, very simple concepts, looking for each other amid a busy crowd of instinct-driven brain signals, finally finding each other and embracing.
His pack had no communicable sound for the concept. His mind had no word for the idea. But if he’d had a wider range of words to construct his thoughts from then his mind would have been full of words like use, make, build…
His small mind suddenly produced an image, an image of a fast-flowing river and a tree trunk lying across it — a device the new creatures had built to cross the river.
He turned to the others, clicked his teeth and beckoned them to follow.
What he had growing in his mind is what any human being would have called… a plan.
CHAPTER 61
2001, New York
They approached the archway. Cartwright nodded at his men still standing guard outside. He gestured to Forby to join them inside as the shutter cranked noisily up. The other men he instructed to continue guarding the entrance, allowing no one else inside.
One by one they all stooped under the shutter as it clattered to a halt. As he followed the others in, Cartwright glanced up at the sky above Manhattan, beginning to lighten with the first grey stain of dawn. Another hour and it was going to be daylight, New Yorkers getting ready to go to work, and disgruntled civilians building up around the road blocks either end of the Williamsburg Bridge. Traffic police, TV film crews and journalists were surely soon going to add to that, asking his men and the National Guard soldiers where their orders had come from. What the hell was going on? He and his discreet little under-the-radar agency could do without attracting that kind of attention. The terrorist-bomb cover story those men had been given would hold for a little while longer, but not forever.
The last one inside the archway, he pressed the button and the shutter rattled down noisily again. Forby removed his bio-containment hood and then unslung his machine pistol.
‘It’s all right, no need to aim it at the girls,’ said Cartwright. ‘But just have it to hand, uh?’
Forby nodded and lowered his aim.
‘So,’ he continued, approaching the desk stacked with monitors, ‘the computer? Before it’s all fried?’
Maddy nodded. ‘Yes, of course. DOMINOES.’
Cartwright shook his head. Of course. You idiot, Lester. He looked at the Domino’s pizza boxes strewn across the desk, and would have slapped himself if he’d been alone.
The dialogue box on one of the screens flickered to life as a cursor flashed and scuttled across the screen with new text.
› Welcome back, Maddy.
‘Hi, Bob,’ she said. ‘I’m in time, aren’t I?’
› No system files have been erased yet. You had another seven minutes before I proceeded with your instructions.
‘Christ,’ muttered Lester, ‘you weren’t kidding.’
Sal shook her head. ‘Nope.’
› My camera detects unauthorized personnel in the field office.
‘Yes,’ said Maddy, ‘we have guests.’
› Are you under duress?
‘No, it’s fine, Bob. These guys are OK, for now.’
Cartwright tapped Maddy’s arm and spoke quietly to her. ‘Anything funny, I mean it… you say anything to that computer that sounds remotely like a warning and it’ll be the very last thing you do.’
She nodded. ‘Don’t worry… I’m not stupid.’ She sat down in one of the office chairs and faced the computer’s webcam. ‘Bob, we got a message from Liam.’
› I am very pleased to hear that.
‘Yes, so are we.’
Sa
l joined her at the table. ‘Hey, Bob.’
› Hello, Sal.
She held up the piece of paper Lester Cartwright had produced earlier. ‘This is the message. Can you see it clearly?’
› Hold it very still, please. I will scan it.
A moment later the scanned image from the webcam appeared on one of the monitors and the image flickered light and dark as Bob adjusted the contrast to get a clearer resolution of the handwriting. Then a highlight box flashed around each handwritten letter in rapid succession, until finally a text-processing application opened itself on yet another monitor with the entire message typed out clearly.
› Some of the message is in code.
‘That’s right,’ said Sal. ‘It’s a book code.’
› The encryption clue is ‘magic’. Is this correct?
‘Yes.’
› I have more than thirty thousand data strings that include the word ‘magic ’.
‘I think that’s referring to the book you were reading the other day. Do you remember? We were discussing it.’
› Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
‘Yeah, that’s the one.’
Cartwright and Forby leaned forward. ‘You have got to be kidding,’ mumbled the old man.
‘Hey, my daughter is reading those books,’ said Forby. ‘Is that the next one?’
‘It’s the last one,’ said Maddy. ‘Book seven.’
‘Jeez! What my girl wouldn’t give to get a look at that!’
Cartwright cocked an eyebrow at his man. ‘Forby… please be quiet.’ The man obediently drew back and resumed his wary stance, the gun held loosely in his hands.
Sal sat down beside Maddy. ‘Bob, you and the duplicate AI will have the same digital book file, right?’
› Affirmative. The file was in my short-term memory cache when we downloaded the duplicate AI into the support unit.
‘Then this should be pretty much straightforward,’ said Maddy.
‘Yeah.’ Sal flicked her hair out of her eyes. ‘You’ve just got to replace each three-number code with the letter. You understand how the code works, Bob, yeah?’
› Affirmative. Page number. Line number. Letter number.
‘That’s right.’
› Just a moment.
They watched in silence as clusters of numbers were momentarily highlighted on the document, while on another screen, pages of the book flashed back and forth in a blur. The task was completed in less than thirty seconds.
› The complete message is: Take this to Archway 9, Wythe Street, Brooklyn, New York on Monday 10 September 2001. Message: Sip, two, sehjk, three, npne, gour, zwro, aix. Key is ‘Magic’.
They stared at it in silence for a few moments, trying to make sense of it.
‘Well, that’s just gibberish, isn’t it?’ said Cartwright.
‘Are you sure you’re working from the same digital book file?’ asked Maddy.
› Affirmative.
‘The original numbers on the fossil,’ said Cartwright, ‘some of them were indistinct, or incomplete. I have access to the original piece of rock.’
‘No… it’s OK,’ said Sal. ‘If it’s just numbers it’s really easy to work out. Sip is six. Sehjk, must be seven.’ She worked quickly, writing the numbers down on a scrap of paper.
‘There.’
6-2-7-3-9-4-0-6
‘It’s not in the usual time-stamp format,’ said Maddy.
› Please show me, Sal.
Sal held the piece of paper up to the webcam.
› It is a number. 62,739,406. Suggestion: it is the AI duplicate’s best estimation of their current time location.
‘Oh my God!’ gasped Maddy. ‘It actually managed to work it out?’ She looked at the cam and smiled. ‘Well, that’s you, actually, isn’t it? A copy of you, Bob. Well done!’
‘To the exact year?’ said Cartwright. ‘To the exact year? That’s
… that’s incredible. How could anyone possibly — ’
› Negative. The best resolution guess can only be to within 1,000 years of that year.
That silenced them all.
They could be up to 500 years before or after the specified time location.
‘Oh jahulla,’ whispered Sal. ‘Then that’s no good to us.’
‘The nearest thousand years?’ Maddy’s head drooped. ‘How are we supposed to find him in that?’
Cartwright looked down at both girls. ‘So your machine can’t bring back your colleague?’
Maddy shook her head. ‘It takes time to build up enough charge to open a portal, particularly for one that long ago. I don’t even know how long it would take to accumulate enough to open one then anyway, let alone do it thousands and thousands of times over.’
› Information: approximate charge time — nine hours.
‘So we can do it,’ said Sal.
Maddy laughed drily. ‘Yes, we can… but a thousand years? If we opened one window for each year it’ll take us nine thousand hours… what’s that? Just over a year of constantly opening and closing portals.’
‘So? We’ll do that for Liam, right?’
Maddy sighed. ‘That’s opening one window per year. What are the chances of Liam standing right there in the two or three seconds of that year? Hmm? What if he was asleep at that moment? Taking a leak? Hunting for food? To stand any sort of chance we’d need to open one… like… every day!’
‘This sounds like a needle-in-a-haystack problem,’ said Cartwright unhelpfully.
‘Oh.’ Sal bit her lip. ‘But we could try, couldn’t we?’
‘Three hundred and sixty-five thousand attempts!’ replied Maddy. ‘Do you want to have a guess how many years that would take us? Hmm? Lemmesee,’ she muttered, as she gnawed on the nails of one hand. ‘Oh, there… three hundred and seventy-five years or something.’ She made a shrewish face, growing pink and mottled with frustration and anger. ‘So, what do you say we get started, then?’
‘Then I’m sorry, that’s it,’ stepped in Cartwright. ‘I’m afraid your friend is stuck where he is. This facility will need to be packed up by the end of today and shipped down to a more secure government facility.’
‘You can’t do that!’ snapped Sal. ‘This is our… this is our home!’
‘It’s now a US government asset,’ he replied calmly. ‘And so are you, my dear.’
› Suggestion.
‘You can’t do that! We’ve got… like, human rights and stuff!’
Cartwright’s smile was humourless and cold, the calm and empty gesture of someone who cared not one whit. ‘I wonder… who exactly is going to miss the pair of you? Hmm? Family? Friends?’
‘The agency,’ snapped Sal. ‘And if you mess with us, if you hurt us, they’ll come for you! They’re from the future! And they’re — ’
‘Sal!’ barked Maddy. ‘Shut up!’ She grabbed Sal’s arm. ‘Don’t say anything more about the agency! Do you understand?’
She clamped her mouth shut and nodded mutely.
Maddy looked at Cartwright. ‘I think I can guess what you have in mind for us; you’ll keep us under lock and key in some remote Area Fifty-one facility, like freaks, like lab rats. And that’s where we’ll remain until you’re sure you know everything about this technology… then I guess you’ll dispose of us, right? A drive out into the middle of the Nevada Desert and one shot in the back of the head for each of us. Is that how you lot work?’
Cartwright shook his head. ‘Nothing so brutal, Maddy. You’re worth far too much to us alive. Even when I’m sure you’ve told me all that you know, we’re still going to need guinea pigs to test your time machine on.’ He sighed. ‘Mind you, it would have been good to have your colleague too… I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with the idea of him being out there roaming around history. But I suppose if he’s sixty-two million years away, I can’t see him doing — ’
Sal cast a glance back at the monitor.
› Suggestion: rapid-sweep density probes.
She
pointed at the screen. ‘Maddy! Look!’
Maddy spun in her chair to look at the monitor and quickly digested the words. ‘Oh my God, yes! Probes. Density probes… that could work!’
‘What?’ said Cartwright, shaking his head irritably at the distraction. ‘What’re you on about?’
‘Tachyon signal probes to check a return location is clear of obstructions and that someone else isn’t wandering through it before we open.’
Cartwright looked none the wiser.
‘It’s like… it’s like knocking on a door before entering. Like asking is anyone in there? It’s a lot quicker than actually opening a portal. A lot less energy needed.’ She turned back towards the mic on the desk. ‘Bob, what are you suggesting? We can’t scan every moment over a thousand years… can we?’
› Negative. We scan a fixed moment of each day, 500 years either side of the calculated year. That is a total of 365,250 density probes.
‘But that’s going to take you what? Months? Years?’ asked Cartwright.
› Negative. Small signals, no more than a few dozen particles per signal, would be enough to identify a transient mass. Movement.
‘Yes,’ said Maddy. ‘That’s it! And all the signals that came back with some movement detected could become a… become our candidate list: a shortlist of times we could try to open a portal on. Bob, how long would it take to do that many probes?’ She turned back to Cartwright. ‘It’ll take a lot less time, I promise you! Maybe just a few days, tops!’
He shook his head. ‘Unacceptable. I want this archway empty by the end of today. Empty and everything inside in boxes and en route to — ’
‘Please!’ begged Maddy. ‘We can’t leave Liam out there!’
Cartwright silently shook his head.
‘He knows the location of all the other field offices,’ cut in Sal.
Maddy’s jaw dropped open. ‘Whuh?’
‘He alone knows where they all are. Locations, time-stamps.’ She turned to Maddy. ‘I’m sorry… I was going to tell you, but… but Foster swore me to secrecy.’