Day of the Predator tr-2

by Alex Scarrow

  Maddy stirred. ‘I better go and sort out the return window for the support — ’ she corrected herself — ‘for Becks.’ She turned and headed back inside.

  The rest of them savoured the evening panorama, watching beads of car headlights edging forward along FDR Drive across the river, and a ferry cutting the mirrored reflection of Manhattan with its wake. Finally, it was Edward who stated the obvious as-yet-unfinished business.

  ‘Me and Laura, we got to go back, don’t we? To get things back to the way they were?’

  ‘Yes,’ Liam nodded. ‘But I don’t suppose it has to be tonight.’

  ‘Good,’ whispered Laura, ‘I’m not feeling so good.’

  ‘We’ve got some beds back inside,’ said Sal. She looked at the girl and the Chinese boy. Both looked pale and ill, their faces smudged with a fortnight’s worth of grime. And Liam… She realized he looked disconcertingly old and young at the same time with that streak of white hair at his temple.

  ‘I’ll go make some coffee,’ she said.

  CHAPTER 79

  65 million years BC, jungle

  Becks watched the pyre of logs and branches burn. Amid curling tongues of flame she could just about make out the outline of the several dozen bodies she’d stacked on top. The log bridge was gone now, its counterweight device dismantled like their windmill and tossed on the fire as kindling. The palisade, the lean-tos, all gone as well. The assorted rucksacks, baseball caps, jackets, mobile phones that had flown back into the past, all of them tossed on the fire.

  By morning those things would be nothing more than soot or contorted puddles of plastic that would eventually break down over tens of thousands of years into minute untraceable contaminants.

  Her computer mind took a moment to make a detailed audit of all the other items of forensic evidence that marked their two-week stay here. The human bodies she’d been unable to retrieve: Franklyn, Ranjit and Kelly. Of those, only Franklyn had died in a location that would one day yield fossils, and even then it was statistically unlikely that his body was going to be preserved in a way that would produce anything. A corpse needed to be almost immediately covered by a layer of sediment to stand a chance of that. Those three bodies, wherever they lay, were exposed to the elements, to scavengers.

  Bullets and casings littered the clearing. But they too would soon become unidentifiable nuggets of rust in this humid jungle. Perhaps, a hundred years from now, no more than stains of oxidized soil on the jungle floor.

  She was satisfied that the sheer weight of time and natural processes would wipe their presence clean. There was always the remote possibility that a footprint or the unnatural scar of an axe blade on a tree trunk might just, somehow, become an immortalized impression on a fragment of rock. But the probability factors she crunched yielded an acceptable contamination risk.

  Her partially healed stomach wound had ripped open as she’d laboured on the funeral pyre, but a dark plug of congealing scab prevented any further valuable blood leaking out of her. The dressing on her arm had also unwound earlier, revealing red-raw muscle tissue and bone. A layer of skin over the top of that would have offered her damaged limb some protection — instead the fragile workings of her arm were now clogged with dirt and twigs and leaves and all manner of bugs.

  An infection advisory flashed quietly in the background of her mind, along with several others that warned her that her biological combat chassis had suffered enough damage to warrant immediate medical attention. As she watched tongues of orange lash up into the Cretaceous night sky towards a moon a hat size too big, she detected the first precursor particles of the scheduled window and stepped towards the open ground where it was due to open.

  She looked back one last time at the fire and picked out the dark twisted limbs of the hominid species amid the flames. For a moment she felt something she couldn’t identify: sadness, was it? Guilt? All she knew was that it came from a part of her mind that didn’t organize thoughts into mission priorities and strategic options.

  A sphere of churning air suddenly winked into existence in front of her and calmly, impassively, she stepped forward through sixty-five million years into a dimly lit brick archway.

  The first face her eyes registered through the shimmering was Liam O’Connor’s. He smiled tiredly and she momentarily wondered if his mind was flashing the human equivalent set of damage advisory warnings.

  ‘Welcome home, Becks,’ he said softly and then, without any warning, he clasped his arms around her. ‘We did it!’ he muttered into her ear.

  She processed the curious gesture and her silicon swiftly came back with the recommendation that returning the demonstration of affection would be an acceptably appropriate response. Her good arm closed around his narrow shoulders.

  ‘Affirmative, Liam… we did it.’

  CHAPTER 80

  2001, New York

  Monday (time cycle 50)

  They stayed for a few days, Edward and Laura. Maddy said they were probably suffering some sort of radiation sickness from the lab explosion and needed some rest and recuperation. It was nice to have some new faces around here for a while, anyway. But Maddy said they had to go. She was right, of course. They had things to do, lives to go and lead.

  But not long lives… not Edward, anyway.

  I read his file on our computer. This is so sad. He will write his great maths paper in 2029 that will change the world, and he’ll be just twenty-two when he does that. But then he’ll be dead from cancer before his twenty-seventh birthday.

  Cancer at twenty-seven?

  That seems so unfair. Twenty-seven years isn’t a life. It’s just a taster of life, isn’t it? I know I couldn’t have told him that and, even if I could, would it have been fair to tell him? Would anyone want to know the exact day they were going to die? I know I wouldn’t.

  We were going to send them back to 2015; that was the original plan. But Maddy figured that wasn’t going to work: they’ve both seen too much; they both know too much. Maybe that’s not so important for the girl Laura. Maybe her life isn’t ever going to affect the world that much. But Chan… he’s everything the future’s going to be. It all kind of starts with what he’s going to one day write in a paper.

  So what did we do? We left them outside when the field reset. We watched with the shutter open. We watched time come and take them away. Reality just erased them, like someone deleting files off a computer. Maddy says she’s pretty sure that’s going to make things all right again. Reality will bring them back. They’ll be born once more, like all the other kids who died; they’ll be born… be babies, toddlers, kids, teenagers a second time. Only this time they’ll visit some energy lab in 2015 and then get to go home and tell their mums and dads what a totally boring day trip they had.

  Well, at least that’s what we’re hoping.

  And what about the person, whoever that was, who tried to kill Edward? I suppose we’ll know whether history’s been changed enough that he or she makes some different choices. If we get the same message again from the future… then, well, we’ll have to deal with this all over again, won’t we? Hopefully not.

  We just have to wait and see if this fixes everything. Nothing’s certain. Nothing’s final.

  ‘Everything’s fluid’… that’s Maddy’s phrase. What does that really mean?

  So, the female support unit, Becks (still trying to get used to that name), is still healing. Those creatures really messed her arm up by the look of it. Bob says the regrown skin will probably show a lot of scarring, and the muscles and tendons may never be fully functional again. Which led to an argument between Maddy and Liam.

  Maddy suggested flushing the body and growing a new support unit, one of the big tough male ones. But Liam got angry. He said ‘she deserves better’.

  I don’t know what I think. After all, they’re just organic robots, aren’t they? And whatever knowledge her AI picked up would be saved, right?

  But Liam says there’s more to them than just the computer… th
ere’s something else in there, something human-like in their heads. So maybe he’s right. It does seem unfair to do that to her. After all, it seems she did really well.

  Anyway, she’s got a name… I mean, how can you just flush something away that’s got, like, a name? It’s wrong, isn’t it?

  Seems like the argument’s all settled now, though. Looks like we’re keeping her but also growing another Bob. Maddy said there seemed to be nothing in the ‘how to’ manual that says we can’t have two support units.

  So why not?

  CHAPTER 81

  2001, New York

  The old man was sitting on the park bench and throwing nuggets of dough from the crusty end of a hot-dog bun to a strutting pack of impatient pigeons.

  ‘I knew I’d find you here,’ said Maddy.

  He looked up at her and smiled a greeting. She closed her eyes and turned her face up towards the clear blue September sky and for a moment savoured the warmth of the sun on her pallid cheeks.

  ‘Unobscured sun and a good hot dog… that’s what you said,’ she added, ‘and where else in Manhattan’s forest of skyscrapers are you going to get that?’

  Foster laughed drily. ‘Clever girl.’

  She flopped down on the park bench next to him. ‘We’ve really missed you. I’ve missed you.’

  ‘It’s only been a few hours,’ he said, tossing another doughy nugget out among the birds.

  ‘What? It’s been months — ’

  ‘Yes, but for me,’ he said, ‘just a few hours.’ He looked at her. ‘Remember, I’m out of the loop now. I’m out of the time bubble. I said goodbye to you on a Monday morning.’ He looked down at his watch. ‘And now it’s nearly one o’clock on the very same Monday.’

  She shook her head. ‘Yes, of course. Stupid of me. I knew that.’

  They sat in silence for a while and watched a toddler on reins attempt to scare away the pigeons by stamping her little feet. The birds merely gave her a wide berth as she ambled through and then returned, to hungrily resume pecking at the crumbs of bread on the ground in her wake.

  ‘You hinted you’d be here, didn’t you? When we parted?’

  Foster nodded. ‘I suppose I felt a little guilty leaving you so soon.’ He puffed out his sallow cheeks. ‘But I’m dying, Maddy. I won’t last very much longer.’

  ‘The tachyon corruption?’

  ‘Yes. It plays merry havoc at a genetic level. It’s like a computer virus, rewriting lines of code with gibberish. Out here,’ he sighed, ‘outside the time bubble, I might get a little longer to live. I might get a week or two more. Maybe a month if I’m lucky. That would be nice.’

  She thought about that for a moment. ‘But… you’ll always be…?’

  ‘That’s right, Madelaine. From your point of view, I’ll always be found here in Central Park, at twelve fifty-two a.m. on Monday the tenth of September. Like all these other people,’ he said, gesturing at the busy park, the queue of people standing beside the hot-dog vendor across the grass, ‘like them, I’ve become part of the furniture of here and now… part of the wallpaper. That’s the other reason why I left.’

  She frowned, not getting that.

  ‘If I’d stayed with you and the others… I’d be long gone by now. This way, I can still help you. Someone to talk to.’

  ‘Ah.’ She nodded.

  ‘But each time you come and find me, Madelaine, remember, each time you come and find me… it’ll be the first time for me. Do you see what I mean?’

  Of course it would. She realized, for the old man, Monday had been a coffee and a bagel and a goodbye. And now, three hours later, a momentary reunion in Central Park. Each time the field office reset itself, any conversation he had with her… never happened. For Foster there’d be no memory of it.

  He laughed. ‘It’ll be like visiting some senile old fogey in a madhouse. You’ll have to get used to repeating yourself.’

  She shared his chuckle. ‘I had a boyfriend like that once. He never listened to me.’

  He sniffed. ‘You came here, I presume, because you need help?’

  ‘Well, we did have a problem, but it’s all fixed now, I think.’

  He patted her arm. ‘See? I knew you lot were ready.’

  ‘Hardly. We scraped through this one, Foster. It was a close-run thing.’

  She gave him the bare bones of their story. Foster shook his head. ‘Dinosaur times?’ he whispered. ‘I… I never thought the machine could take us so far back.’

  ‘You never did that?’

  ‘No. Never that far. How’s Liam?’

  ‘Well, that’s just it. I don’t know how much damage that did to him. It’s definitely done something to him, aged him in some ways. He has…’ She looked at Foster, and for the first time, she noticed the rheumy whites of his eyes were faintly laced with the scars of old burst blood vessels. ‘Like you, haemorrhaging. And a streak of white hair. Who knows what’s been damaged inside him. I mean, that’s just what I can see. Foster, how long can he take this kind of punishment? How long do you think he will live?’

  He sucked in air through his teeth. ‘Well, he’s a tough old soul. I can tell you that. But, you see… it all depends on where and when he goes, Madelaine. Who knows how long he’s got?’

  That didn’t help much.

  ‘Do I tell him or not, Foster? You know, he’s not blind. He’s seen his bad eye, he’s seen his hair. He jokes about it, but he’s not stupid. He must know this isn’t good for him.’

  He shook his head. ‘I know he’ll cope. But whether you tell him has to be your call. You’re the one in charge now. I can give you what advice I can, but command decisions are yours. That’s how it is.’ He tossed the last of his bun in among the birds. ‘I can’t run the field office from out here on a park bench. You’re the boss now.’

  ‘But what about the agency? Is there someone else I can talk to? Someone in charge?’

  ‘I… I’m sorry, Madelaine. That’s… that’s off limits. You have to treat this like you’re entirely on your own. Do you understand? You’re on your own.’

  She cursed. ‘What sort of useless freakin’ agency is this?’

  He pursed his lips sympathetically. ‘I’m afraid that’s just how it is.’

  She ground her teeth in silent frustration for a while, knowing there was nothing more Foster could offer her on the subject of Liam. In any case, there was a new pair of glasses she was due to pick up from the opticians. They’d promised her they’d be ready in a couple of hours and another day of squinting at monitors and getting a migraine for her troubles was something she could live without.

  She stood up. ‘I’d better go. Things to do.’

  He stood up, slowly, achingly. Polite, like a true gentleman.

  ‘You’ll be here again?’ asked Maddy. ‘For sure? Every Monday at this time?’

  ‘Of course,’ he grinned. ‘I do charge by the hour, though.’

  She laughed then hugged him, awkward and faltering. ‘Enjoy your day, Foster.’

  ‘Oh, I have a fun-packed afternoon planned.’

  She squeezed his arm. ‘Take care. I’ll drop by and see you again soon.’ She turned to walk down the path leading to the south-west gate. But a thought suddenly occurred to her. She stopped, turned and saw him standing there among his pigeons, watching her go, almost as if he’d been expecting her to stop and turn.

  ‘Foster? How can you be so sure Liam will cope? What if he works out he’s dying? What’s he gonna do? He might choose to leave us.’

  ‘He’ll do the right thing,’ he replied. ‘You’ll always be able to rely on that… the right thing. He’s a good lad.’ He turned away and began to wade through a parting sea of ruffling grey feathers and curious beady eyes.

  ‘Foster! How can you be so sure?’

  He stopped in his tracks and looked back over his shoulder. ‘How can I be so sure?’

  She nodded. ‘I mean, come on! Who the hell would be stupid enough to keep doing something they know’s killing th
em? What makes you think you know him so well?’

  ‘Oh, I know — ’ he cocked an eyebrow — ‘because he’s me.’

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