Liam spun round angrily, shaking off his hand. ‘Please! Can you leave us alone? We need to talk!’
Panelli looked at them both suspiciously. ‘I heard you say something about an agency signal? You some kinda spy? Some kinda enemy sympathizer?’
‘What? No!’
‘You sound sorta funny to me. Got some kinda accent going on there. What do you think, men?’
‘Oh, for cryin’ out loud! I’m Irish!’ replied Liam. ‘I’m not a flippin’ German spy!’
Liam looked up at his support unit. ‘Bob, tell them I’m your friend.’
‘He is my friend.’
Panelli looked surprised. ‘You… you know this kid?’
‘Affirmative. I know him.’
‘So… so, what’s the deal? You family or something?’
Liam shrugged. ‘Yeah… that’s right. We’re family, aren’t we, Bob?’
Bob cocked an eyebrow, uncertain what to say. Then, after a moment: ‘This is the one I have been looking for,’ his deep voice rumbled.
Panelli suddenly looked unhappy with that, jealous that his self-appointed status as Bob’s right-hand man had seemingly been undermined by some scrawny kid.
‘So, Captain Bob… you been looking for this kid, an’ now you found him. What does that mean for me… us?’ he asked, a look of growing concern on his face. ‘Do we… do we still follow you?’
Bob frowned and looked down at Liam for guidance, again unsure what to say.
Good grief. These guys… they think he’s some sort of a saint.
He almost giggled at the ridiculousness of it.
‘Tell them, Bob. Tell them exactly what we’re doing.’
‘We are awaiting a signal.’
‘A sign?’ gasped the young corporal, standing just behind Panelli.
‘Yes… that’s it exactly,’ said Liam, ‘we’re awaiting a sign.’
The word rippled around the gathered men, whispered with growing excitement and awe.
A sign. A sign.
‘Do you… do you m-mean,’ continued the corporal, ‘a s-sign from the Lord?’
‘From the field off–’ added Bob helpfully. Liam elbowed him in the ribs and he closed his mouth.
‘From the what?’ asked Panelli.
‘A sign,’ repeated Liam, ‘from, you know, from… beyond.’
Whispers spread like a breeze among the men. Liam spotted several anointing themselves with the sign of the cross.
‘Beyond,’ uttered the corporal, wide-eyed.
‘That’s right,’ said Liam, trying to keep his voice even and his lips from creasing, ‘from… you know who.’
A silence settled over the men.
At that moment a scudding cloud happened to pass out of the way of the sun, sending a burst of dazzling rays down on to the snowy ploughed field, bathing Bob in a warm light. The fuzz of coarse nut-brown hair growing on his coconut-like head seemed to glow for a moment, glow just like a halo.
A collective gasp passed through the gathered men, and one by one they began to kneel, even the weasel – Panelli – who Liam would never in a month of Sundays have thought was the church-going type.
Oh, just great. That’s all we need.
CHAPTER 64
1957, woods outside Baltimore
The soup sploshed into Liam’s bowl from a ladle smelled and looked almost as unappetizing as the gruel he’d grown used to eating in the prison camp.
He looked up at the man who’d served him. ‘Thank you.’
The man offered an awkward smile and tugged his cap politely. ‘Is there anything I can get for Captain Bob?’
Liam considered that for a moment. Bob was clumsy with a spoon. Chances were he’d end up dribbling the soup all down his front.
Not very inspiring. Not very saint-like.
‘Our leader would like some bread, if you got any.’
The man smiled, delighted to be of service. He rummaged in a backpack and produced a long loaf of stale bread. Liam nodded a thanks, tucked it under his arm and began to head back to the tent before hesitating and turning back round to face the man.
‘Uh… our leader sends his blessings for the food.’
The man grinned broadly. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ crossing himself as he spoke. ‘God bless him.’
Liam made his way across the camp, illuminated by the glow of a crackling fire and silver shafts of moonlight, lancing down between the branches of the forest. He nodded politely to the others he passed, offering blessings from Bob along the way. Over the last couple of days, the camp’s atmosphere seemed to have changed from being that of the secret den of a band of patriotic freedom fighters to that of some kind of a monastery. Men who’d exchanged bawdy jokes one day seemed pious and reflective now.
They believe Bob is some warrior angel sent down by God. What do you expect?
Finally, reaching Bob’s modest lean-to, he ducked under a flap of cloth and stepped inside. ‘I picked up some bread for you. I’m afraid it’s not that usual high-protein vomit-like gunk that you normally ingest back in the field office.’
‘I have consumed this food type before,’ said Bob, reaching for the offered loaf of bread and biting off the end of it. After chewing on it for a moment, his saliva breaking it down, his on-board computer analysed the protein content.
He nodded. ‘This is adequate.’
Liam sat down on a wooden crate opposite. ‘You know, I thought I was going to be stuck in that camp forever. I thought I was going to die in there.’
He shuddered at the memories of those months inside, the faces of prisoners he’d grown to know well. Wallace, he wondered, what had become of him in the chaos? Did he survive the massacre? Had he escaped? Liam hoped so.
He slurped noisily on the soup. ‘I found myself wondering if I’d have been better off staying on the Titanic. Drowning to death would’ve been a lot quicker than starving to death, eh?’
‘Correct,’ announced Bob. ‘Death by oxygen denial takes approximately three to five minutes.’
Nice. Soothing words.
Liam put down his spoon, reached out and patted one of Bob’s meaty shoulders. ‘I know this probably won’t mean much to you, since Foster says your mind is just a little machine filled with codes and programs and stuff. But… I suppose… look, I just want to say thank you, Bob. Thanks for coming and getting me.’
He saw some kind of expression flicker across the support unit’s rigid face. Was it some sort of involuntary muscle twitch, or was it a smile? Whatever it was, it almost looked convincing.
They ate in silence for a while. Silence that is, except for Liam’s soup-slurping and the grinding of Bob’s teeth – sounding not unlike the grating noise Liam remembered his Uncle Diarmid’s cows made as they chewed on their winter maize.
‘So you’re suggesting we stay here indefinitely until we get a message?’
‘Negative.’
‘Just say “no”, Bob. It sounds more natural.’
‘No.’
‘Then how long for?’
‘We wait another seventy-eight hours, fifty-seven minutes.’
‘Uh?’ Seventy-eight hours and fifty-seven minutes seemed somewhat specific. ‘Bob, why exactly that long?’
‘By that time, I must have self-terminated.’
Liam dropped his spoon in the soup. ‘Excuse me? Self-terminate… what exactly does that mean?’
Bob stopped chewing on the bread and turned his cool grey eyes on him. ‘Basic operational requirement: six-month lifespan in the field. If I fail to return from a mission after six months, I must self-terminate. They know this. So they will not attempt to send me any messages after six months. If we are to receive a message it will occur before then.’
‘Six months? But… but you’re telling me you’re going to destroy yourself in… in… in… ?’
‘Three days, six hours and fifty-seven minutes’ time,’ answered Bob helpfully. ‘I must terminate by then.’
‘But why?’
‘To prevent my computer technology being used.’
Liam suddenly realized he felt something for the big automaton in front of him. A fondness? He knew it didn’t make any sense that he should care for what was basically a meat-and-muscle weapons platform with a personal organizer stored up top. Perhaps, in a way, it was because they were both new to this timeriding thing. Both new boys. Or maybe it was the thought of being alone in a world that should never have been without Bob to watch over him, to protect him.
‘Bob, can’t you decide not to destroy yourself?’
‘Negative.’
‘What if I were to give you a direct order? As the mission operative, I’m in command here, right?’
‘This is correct.’
‘So if I were to order you to cancel –’
‘This protocol cannot be countermanded. It is firmware.’
‘Firmware?’
‘Built into the computer’s design. It cannot be overridden.’
Liam looked up at his expressionless face. ‘But that’s stupid!’
‘It is unavoidable.’
Liam looked down at his soup, growing cool in its bowl. ‘Doesn’t the thought of dying, well… does it not scare you?’
‘Negative.’
‘Bob, say “no”… not “negative”.’
‘No.’
‘You don’t have any strong feelings about… about terminating yourself?’
‘My consciousness is merely procedural code; my memories are stored on my internal hard drive. My body can be regrown from a single cell. I can be endlessly duplicated, Liam O’Connor. I have no concept of death. So I have no concept of fear.’
‘No fear,’ Liam snorted humourlessly. ‘Jay-zus, I wish I could say that. I’ve spent the last few months spending every waking hour in fear. Afraid I might be picked on by a guard to be made an example of. Afraid they’d decide to finish us all off. Afraid that –’
‘I wish…’ rumbled Bob.
The words stopped Liam’s self-pitying ramble in its tracks. He set the spoon down in his soup bowl and looked up to see the support unit’s eyes were glazed over, focused on some far-off, unattainable desire.
Did he just say ‘I wish…’?
He remembered Foster saying the computer was linked to a small organic brain. Perhaps that tiny wrinkled part of Bob, that undeveloped nub of brain matter, was able to wish for something, to desire something, in an indefinable way?
‘Tell me,’ Liam said softly. ‘What… what do you wish for, Bob?’
‘I wish… I was… like you, Liam O’Connor.’
Liam cocked his head. ‘Like me? Jeez! Look at me. A weedy little runt. I’m sixteen and I still don’t have any bristles I can shave. And the best I ever managed to achieve, before I was supposed to have died, was to become a ship’s steward. Just a flippin’ waiter. Great, huh?’
‘You were recruited because you have essential skills.’
‘Essential skills? You kidding? I can tidy a cabin, make a pot of tea and deliver it without spilling it on a napkin. Big deal.’
‘Your data records indicate you have a very high intelligence quotient, fast mental reaction times and creative cognitive skills.’
‘Really?’
‘These things are listed in your personal profile records.’
‘What records?’
‘I have your complete profile on my hard drive. This includes White Star Shipping’s personnel records, details on your family, your home town, your school reports –’
‘You’ve got my school reports up there in your head?’
‘Affirmative.’ Bob’s eyes flickered momentarily, a sign that he was retrieving data.
‘Liam O’Connor is quite clearly a clever lad,’ Bob began reciting words Liam recognized as being penned by his old headmaster, Father O’Herlihy, ‘perhaps one of the brightest in his academic year. However, he is also prone to gazing out of the window, wool-gathering at the slightest opportunity and not applying himself as much as some of the other promising young boys in his year. Liam is something of a loner; it seems he does rather enjoy his own company during break times, not joining in –’
Bob stopped dead. Frozen for a moment.
‘You all right there, Bob?’
‘One moment… one moment.’
The muscles in Bob’s face flickered and tensed, his eyes blinked rapidly as, inside his head, every thought process came to a sudden grinding halt.
[Transmission particles detected]
His computer sifted the data coming in, sub-atomic particles winking into existence as if by magic and passing through solid matter as if it was air. Enough tachyons were appearing in his neural net – caught like flies in a web – for him to begin to decode some partial message fragments.
[… time cont… complete devastation… low energy… for one on… as follows: Lat: 38°54'24… ]
‘Bob? What’s up with you?’
‘One moment… one moment,’ he replied tonelessly.
More particles arriving, more fragments of message assembling. He waited until the passing wave of particles appeared to have finally ceased. Another minute in silence, waiting for a possible second wave of tachyons to be ensnared inside his head. But there seemed to be nothing more now. The signal beam from the future had briefly passed this way and moved on.
‘I have just received a weak signal from the field office,’ he announced.
‘What?’ Liam’s face lit up. ‘Just now?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Oh… thank Mary-mother-of-Jay-zus they’ve found us! And they’re OK, right? Of course they are.’
Bob became unfrozen and took another bite out of his bread.
‘So don’t keep me in suspense, Bob. What’s the message?’
His eyelids fluttered. ‘Message from field office: time contamination in present. Result is complete devastation. Very low energy. Unsure of window size. Perhaps for one only. No second chance. Time-stamp as follows: Lat: 38°54'24.35"N – Long: 77°2'33.94"W – Time 23.50, 03-03-57.’
Liam stared at Bob. ‘I… I’m not sure I understood much of that. Did you?’
Bob nodded. ‘Their timeline has experienced a significant shift resulting in much destruction. As a result, their external power feed has become compromised.’
Liam’s eyes widened. ‘So what does that mean? Their time machine doesn’t work?’
‘Incorrect. It works, but they have a limited supply of power.’
‘Window for one only… That means…?’
‘That means they have only enough power to return one of us,’ Bob answered. ‘That must be you.’
Liam shook his head. ‘Surely they can get us both back somehow? If they fiddle around with their dials or something.’
‘Negative. Body mass affects the energy required for timeriding. You are very small, requiring much less energy than myself.’
Liam sat in silence for a moment, then finally shook his head. ‘I… I can’t just leave you here on your own to… to terminate yourself, Bob. I just –’
‘That is an illogical assessment.’
‘Surely something can be done to boost the energy their end, or lighten the load our end? Something, surely?’
‘There is something that needs to be done,’ said Bob. ‘The data on this timeline is stored in my hard drive and must be transported back with you.’
‘Uh… I’m not sure I like the sound of that.’ Liam swallowed nervously
. ‘Does that mean what I think it means?’
‘You will have to break open my cranium and remove the soft tissue inside, including my organic brain, to access the computer. Disconnecting the computer and removing it will require me to provide detailed instructions before you do this in order to prevent you from triggering the self-termination firmware as you extract the computer.’
‘Ugh… no… I’m not sure I can do that, Bob. Really… I’m –’
‘You have no choice. It is a mission requirement.’
Liam shook his head, already feeling sick at the thought of hacking open Bob’s head. ‘So… so when would I have to perform this operation?’
‘The extraction window is set for twenty-five hours’ time.’
‘And where is it?’
Bob blinked, retrieving data. ‘The co-ordinates are for a street called Jefferson Place, in the city of Washington DC. It is approximately one mile from the location of our original arrival window.’
Liam’s eyes widened further. ‘A mile from the White House? But that’s just crazy! That whole area is going to be thick with soldiers and those buzzing air-jet thingies.’
‘We must make for this location within the time left. Once there you must extract the computer from my cranium, or alternatively remove my head and take that with you.’
‘Cut your head off?’ Liam blanched, his face turning sickly pale. ‘I can’t do that, Bob. I’m… I’ve never been good with blood and icky stuff. I’ll faint… I’m telling you, I’ll keel over and faint, so I will. And then I’ll miss this window and we’ll both be in a fix.’
He looked down at the tepid remains of lumpy soup in his bowl and put it to one side, no longer feeling hungry. ‘Is there really no other way?’
‘If you were smaller. If I was smaller. If the extraction window was opened geographically closer to the field office. If the extraction window was not so far back in time. These factors all affect the total energy required.’
Bob looked at him with his calm grey eyes. For some reason Bob tried out one of those pitiful smiles he’d picked up from Sal. As far as Liam was concerned, that didn’t help matters. Didn’t help at all. It made him look strangely vulnerable, like an oversized toddler.
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