Time Riders: The Doomsday Code

by Scarrow, Alex

  Maddy looked at Sal. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘I wonder if that’s the same Leonardo DiCaprio as the old man who bought a whole chunk of the Antarctic, like earlier this year.’ She looked at the others. ‘I mean my year, you know? 2026. He went to live there among the penguins. To protect them from oil drillers or something.’

  ‘You gotta be kidding me. Seriously?’

  Sal shrugged. ‘Might be someone else. Pretty sure the name was DiCaprio.’

  Maddy shook her head at the thought of it before returning to the task at hand. She typed a search on ‘Adam Lewis’ and ‘1994’ and ‘Voynich Manuscript’. As Maddy trawled through the hits that came back, Becks cleared a space on the cluttered desk and placed a mug of black coffee in front of her.

  ‘Thanks.’ She scanned the hits and finally picked a link and clicked on it. A moment later the screen went black and a banner logo appeared: a red-flaming eye.

  ‘Oh look, bingo-bango-bongo,’ she said, reaching for the coffee, ‘let’s see what this gives us.’

  The article was a lazy cut-and-paste job from a tabloid newspaper on to some guy’s foil-hat conspiracy-theory website, Dark Eye.

  … Adam Lewis, a student doing a degree in Computer Studies at the University of East Anglia. The computer geek, looking more like a tatty bearded animal rights protester than a Microsoft pencil-neck, claimed in an article posted to New Scientist magazine that he had singlehandedly achieved what historians, code-breakers and several big American mainframe computer systems have all failed to do: to produce a single legible phrase from the mysterious leather-bound book known to historians and code-hounds as the Voynich Manuscript.

  Lewis, 19, laughingly admits that the deciphered phrase sounds a lot like something that might have come out of the kind of dungeons-and-dragons fantasy games he loves to play with fellow geeks. The sentence he supposedly managed to produce from a passage in the Voynich, which he’s not prepared to identify, is this: ‘Pandora is the word. The word leads to truth. Fellow traveller, time to come and find it.’

  Maddy spurted hot coffee over the back of her hand.

  Sal looked at her, concerned. ‘Maddy? You OK?’

  Maddy sat back in the chair, glasses in her hands, absently wiping the lenses as she gazed wide-eyed and unfocused at the monitor in front of her.

  ‘Maddy? What’s up? What’s the matter?’

  She shook her head, chewing her lip a while before finally turning to Sal, with Becks still towering over them in platform heels and looking bemused. ‘I think …’ she started. ‘I’ve got a feeling this Voynich thing might just be the work of another team.’

  ‘Another team?’ Sal’s jaw slowly dropped open. ‘You mean … another group, like us? TimeRiders?’

  Maddy hunched her shoulders. ‘I think we’re not alone, folks.’

  CHAPTER 7

  2001, New York

  ‘You sure about this, Mads? I mean, it’s just a sentence, that’s all. And it doesn’t really say anything anyway.’

  All three of them were slumped in the threadbare armchairs around the wooden kitchen table and Maddy had printed out the web pages she’d read on-screen. Despite explaining her point (very clearly, she thought), Liam still didn’t seem to have grasped it.

  ‘The point is, Liam,’ she tried again, ‘the point is … this Voynich Manuscript may well be a document used by another team to communicate forward from the past, just like you did with the museum’s guest book, like you did with that fossilized message. Now, if someone’s managed to decode some of it, then maybe they’ll decode more of it, or all of it, and God knows what sensitive agency messages are in there being sent forward. If they think their code’s unbreakable, they could be saying all kinds of stuff in there.’

  ‘And the agency is meant to be super-secret,’ added Sal.

  Liam pursed his lips. ‘All right, I suppose I see your point … I suppose.’

  Maddy sighed, not so much frustrated with Liam being slow on the uptake but more because she was keeping something from him, from Sal too. It felt wrong, unfair, and worst of all it made her feel lonely. She remembered word for word the scribbled message she’d found in that deposit box in 1906 and it was beginning to haunt her dreams.

  Maddy, look out for ‘Pandora’, we’re running out of time. Be safe and tell no one.

  More than a message, it seemed like a warning. No, it was a warning. But a warning of what?

  ‘Well, surely we don’t need to go right now, though, do we?’ moaned Liam. ‘It’s late, so it is, and my head’s still ringing from that noise you call music. And I’m tired as –’

  ‘In the morning, then,’ Maddy cut in. ‘We all need a good night’s sleep, anyway. I’m still a little hazy.’

  ‘Good plan,’ agreed Liam.

  ‘But this time it’s not you who’s going back, Liam.’

  The other two looked at Maddy. ‘What?’

  You going to tell them about Pandora, Maddy? You ready to do that? No, she decided, at least not yet. Not until she knew a little more.

  ‘I’m going, and I’ll take Becks with me for security, of course, but you need to be here, Liam, to watch over Bob. If I’m delayed and he’s ready to hatch, you should be here for him when he comes out so that he sees you first. You remember what Foster said? The clone imprints on the first person he sees. Bonds with them. You should be here for his birth.’

  ‘True.’ He nodded at that. She knew he didn’t want to miss that moment.

  ‘And, look, it’s not exactly like I’m heading somewhere super-dangerous. It’s England, 1994.’ She turned to Becks, standing patiently at the end of the table. ‘Where is it exactly?’

  ‘Information: Adam Lewis is a registered second-year student at the University of East Anglia in the city of Norwich.’

  ‘A university campus … there. Hardly dangerous.’ She grinned. ‘Maybe even fun.’

  ‘I could come,’ said Sal hopefully.

  ‘Sorry, not this time, Sal. It’s probably best you’re here too, watching for signs. We’ve had one small ripple … there could be more on the way.’

  Sal huffed. ‘Why do you always get to decide everything now?’

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s …’ Maddy sighed. ‘Foster made me leader, Sal. So I’m supposed to lead. That’s the way it is. I wish it wasn’t. I wish somebody else was calling the shots. I wish Foster was still here, to be honest. But it is what it is.’

  ‘Just seems unfair.’

  ‘All of this is unfair! I didn’t want to come here. I didn’t choose to die in a plane crash at eighteen. I had plans, you know? I had plans to do more with my life than watch a bunch of computer screens and live in this cruddy dump.’ She could have said more. Things she’d regret later. It was bad enough having to be in charge when she barely felt she had a grasp on how things worked. But, add to that, somebody somewhere seemed to be trying to warn her about something and she was way too stupid to get it.

  The moment tasted sour and all of a sudden she felt tired. She looked at her watch: it was gone two in the morning. ‘Look, I’m hitting the mattress. Maybe we all should. It’s late and we’ve got stuff to do tomorrow.’

  She got up and headed into the arched recess where their bunks were and pulled a curtain across as she changed into her PJs.

  Liam looked at Sal and shrugged, both of them perplexed at her mood. ‘Maybe she’s missing home?’

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ said Sal.

  CHAPTER 8

  2001, New York

  Maddy and Becks were treading water in the perspex tube one moment and gone – along with sixty gallons of diluted disinfectant solution – the next. The large plastic tub flexed inwards with a loud thud that echoed through the archway.

  ‘Jay-zus! Does that tube always do that?’

  Sal nodded. ‘The pressure of all the water suddenly not there … it makes the perspex flex.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ He looked round at Sal sitting patiently beside him, hands crossed in her lap. ‘So what n
ormally happens now?’

  Her smile was resigned. ‘We haven’t had “normal” yet. Either we’ve been hiding from cannibal mutants or we’ve had secret-service agents knocking at the door.’ She laughed skittishly. ‘It seems like we’ve been hopping from one crisis to the next since we first arrived here, doesn’t it?’

  Liam nodded. ‘Well then, while it appears the sky hasn’t yet fallen on our heads again, and while we’re waiting for this machinery to recharge, perhaps Miss Vikram would like to go for a breakfast in one of those charming Scottish restaurants.’

  ‘Scottish restaurants?’

  ‘One of them McDougal places?’

  ‘McDonalds?’

  ‘Aye, that’s the fella. The ones with the big fancy yellow M.’

  She pulled a face. ‘Breakfast sounds good … but maybe somewhere else?’

  CHAPTER 9

  May 1994, UEA campus, Norwich

  Opening the portal in the university’s swimming pool after closing time had seemed a good idea to Maddy back in the archway. They’d arrive wet, but there’d be changing facilities, and hopefully a blow-dryer or towel or something. But now, floundering beneath the water in total darkness, not knowing which way was up and which way was down, she realized it ranked pretty high on her own Not To Be Tried Again list.

  Suddenly Maddy felt Becks’s hand grasping her, followed by a hearty yank and her face breaking the surface. She coughed, retched and spluttered as Becks swam to the side of the pool, pulling her after.

  ‘Recommendation: this was not a good idea.’

  ‘No, really?’ she gasped.

  Becks nodded firmly, not yet a master of irony. ‘Yes, you could have drowned.’

  Maddy eased herself out of the cold water and flopped exhausted on to the side. She looked around. The university’s sports centre was closed now, the swimming pool dark, lit only by the dim amber glow of street lights outside, strips of orange light leaking through the drawn and turned-down blinds along the racing-lane side of the pool.

  ‘All right, well … so we’re here now. We’ve got four hours. So let’s get dry and changed. And then we’ll go find this Adam Lewis.’

  Adam’s nerves were getting the better of him. He needed to get a grip.

  ‘Get a grip,’ he uttered to the face in his mirror. A lean face of freckles and acne, framed by the pitifully feeble sprouting of an auburn beard. Auburn – not ginger. Auburn. That’s what he kept telling everyone. And the tatty twists and turns of greasy hair tied back in a ponytail, they were flippin’ well auburn too.

  His eyes looked back at him through round-framed ‘Lennon’ specs.

  ‘You look terrible,’ he told himself.

  Well, why not? he argued back. I’ve got every right to look terrible.

  Why not indeed. He was scared. Really scared. He’d not stepped out of his room now for what? … Four, five days? Missed half a dozen study periods and lectures and his flatmates were beginning to mutter about him in the hallway outside his door. They’d already thought he was a bit of an oddball before … well, before … this.

  Outside it was dark. Eleven. He could hear the thud of music coming from the floor below. He recognized it: Chili Peppers. His flatmates were playing Mario on the SNES; there was a lot of noise, the clack-fissss of cans of beer being popped open, and laughing, lots of laughing … most probably about him.

  Not so big a deal to him now. A week ago stuff like that got him down a bit, being a loner, being perceived as the resident freak. But he brushed off the quips and sniggering at his expense the way every hardened geek does it, by acting as if far greater matters were on his mind, matters these beer-swilling oiks wouldn’t even begin to understand.

  One day I’ll be flying business class … and, you idiots, you’ll be serving fries somewhere.

  That’s the sort of thing he usually said aloud. The lads laughed and shook their heads at his lame and faltering comeback. But he quietly smiled because he knew it was undoubtedly going to be true. And that, he figured, was how he and every other geek coped with being the frozen-out loner – the certainty that there’d come a day of mega payback for all the jibes and the sniggering.

  But right now he really did have far, far greater matters on his mind.

  Why me? How do they know my name? Oh God … who are ‘they’?

  All of a sudden the throbbing music and the drunken guffawing stopped. He realized the front doorbell to their digs had just gone. He licked dry, cracked lips and realized he was holding his ragged breath to hear better who was down there at the door; to hear who’d come knocking at so late an hour.

  He could hear Lance’s Glaswegian accent … and who else? Another murmuring voice. Quiet, polite, businesslike. Female.

  Lance was trying it on, some witty banter, loosened up by the beer. His easy Celtic charm usually worked flawlessly on the ‘freshers’, first-year girls looking for an older, wiser university boyfriend. But, from the murmuring tone of this female visitor, she seemed wholly uninterested.

  He heard Lance’s attitude suddenly change. Clearly facing a rejection for the first time in his life. He sounded like a petulant child. ‘Well, if you really want to see the freak … he’s up the stairs. Second on the right.’

  Adam heard footsteps on the uncarpeted hallway and up the wooden stairs.

  His heart was pounding in his chest, his stomach suddenly churning like a spin dryer.

  ‘Oh G-God … it’s …’

  Them.

  His mind spun between two options: to go for the window, clamber out, drop down outside and run for his life. Or to stay put and meet them. See what they wanted from him.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God …

  Maddy stood outside the door. She turned to look at Becks before gently rapping on it with her knuckles. ‘Adam Lewis?’

  There was no answer. But she heard something stirring inside, the clunk and scrape of footsteps.

  ‘Adam?’ she called softly. ‘Can we talk to you?’

  A long pause. Downstairs she could hear the murmur of male voices, no doubt talking about her and Becks. Actually, probably just Becks. She was well aware the support unit tended to attract the gaze of excitable testosterone-fuelled young men. Finally she heard a shuffling sound from just beyond the door.

  ‘Who … who are y-you?’ a voice came through the keyhole.

  ‘My name’s Maddy.’

  ‘Are … y-you … h-here to g-get me?’ The voice sounded pitiful, thin with fear.

  ‘No. I’m not here to get you. I just want to talk to you.’

  ‘I … did … what I was told. I d-did exactly … w-what it told me to d-do …’

  Maddy had no idea what he was talking about. But she decided the only way she was going to get him to open the door was to mention something very specific.

  ‘Adam … I’m here about a particular word.’

  Silence.

  ‘I’m here to talk about Pandora.’

  She heard the dull click of the lock turning and the door cracked open an inch. A pale face dotted with spots and the glint of spectacles appeared in the space between the door and frame. ‘Are y-you … are you … the one?’

  Go on, Maddy, play along with him. She offered him a reassuring smile. ‘Sure, I’m the one.’

  ‘The … the one who w-will explain? B-because I n-need to know … I … I …’

  ‘I’ll do my very best, Adam … if you’ll just let us in.’

  The crack widened another half-inch as the glinting of spectacles shifted to study Becks. ‘And who’s she?’

  ‘She’s a friend. She’s no harm. Just a friend.’

  ‘D-does she know? A … about … P-Pandora?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Adam studied them both for another few seconds before finally his face pulled back into the darkness and with a creak of worn hinges the door swung slowly open, inviting them in.

  CHAPTER 10

  1994, Norwich

  It was too dark to see anything, but the room she step
ped into smelled musty. A room, she guessed, that was probably littered with dirty clothes and underwear lying in crumpled piles. ‘Can we have a light on in here?’ she asked.

  ‘Y-yes … sure.’ A moment later a bedside lamp snicked on.

  The room was as small and as messy as she’d expected. But the walls … the walls caught her breath. She’d done a couple of terms of college before dropping out and getting a programming job. She’d had a room like this once and covered its walls with posters of sci-fi movies she loved like Aliens, Predator, Serenity, computer games, bands and stuff.

  But this – this was plain weird.

  All four walls seemed to be covered with sheets of paper filled by the handwritten scrawl of strange-looking hieroglyphics.

  ‘So you’re pretty keen on – what? Egyptian stuff, then?’ she said, breaking the silence.

  ‘Uh … oh … yeah. No, it’s not hieroglyphics. I’m into cryptanalysis.’ He turned back to her. ‘You – you said you’re the one, right? That’s w-who you are? The one who explains it?’