by Alex Scarrow
And yes, fact is, I need to know what Pandora is. What does it mean? Who wants me to know about it?
‘Two … One!’
Too late for second thoughts now, Maddy.
Energy pulsed out of the machinery beside the tube and, with a loud, echoing thud of flexing perspex, Liam, the two support units and several dozen gallons of water were instantly gone.
Adam filled the silence with his own whispered voice.
‘Absolutely … in-cred-i-ble!’
CHAPTER 20
1194, Kirklees Priory, Yorkshire
A heavy and wet landing. Liam staggered under the impact, dropping to his knees as the white mist of chaos space quickly evaporated from around him.
‘Ow!’ he yelped as he slowly attempted to get to his bare feet. The ground beneath him was a lumpy dark soil rendered as hard as sharp-edged rock by a thick morning frost. Shivering in just his boxer shorts, he looked up to see the three of them were standing in the middle of a small and empty windswept field. The lifeless light of a pale sun hiding behind featureless scudding clouds made the winter morning seem like a forlorn twilight.
‘L-lovely.’ Liam shuddered, hugging himself.
‘We should get dressed immediately,’ advised Bob.
‘T-t-too r-right,’ he chattered.
He slid back the zip of his plastic bag and pulled out a thick coarse woollen robe of olive green and eagerly pulled it over his head, ignoring the scratching against his skin. Next, a pair of thick cotton leggings. Not technically of the period, but the best they could get at short notice. As a precaution Sal had unpicked the brand label and wash instructions. It looked convincing enough to Liam’s eye and hopefully no one was going to be studying his undergarments too closely. Finally, a pair of soft leather shoes with wooden soles, picked up at the fancy-dress hire store, and a length of braided rope to secure the robe around his waist.
As they dressed in hurried silence he watched a dozen crows circling in the grey-white sky above; their cawing echoed across the stillness like a caution. He listened to the mournful hum of a fresh wind and the dry rustle of dead leaves picked up and tossed from one ploughed furrow into the next.
‘It’s n-not w-what I expected,’ he uttered, his teeth still chattering as he cinched the rope belt tightly round him.
Becks’s head appeared through the neck-hole of a muddy brown dress. ‘What were you expecting, Liam O’Connor?’
He shrugged. ‘Green woods … sunny meadows … may flowers.’
She frowned and cocked her head. ‘Why? It is winter.’
Liam watched a plume of his breath curl, twist and drift away from him. ‘Dunno really. I just — ’
‘Recommendation,’ said Bob, ‘we should dispose of these bags immediately.’
‘Agreed.’
Bob kicked at the ground and dislodged a dark clod of soil. Then squatted down and began digging with his big hands like a dog burrowing for a bone. Liam handed Becks his bag and then took the opportunity to study their surroundings. Ahead of them the field ended at the edge of a wood. He turned. Behind them the field rolled over the gentle brow of a hill, and beyond that he could just make out a thin line of smoke drifting up from the top of a stone chimney.
‘Hey! There’s something over there,’ he said.
‘Affirmative,’ both support units chorused.
Liam tutted at them both. ‘What’ve I told you two about that? The “affirmative” thing sounds wrong, so it does. Even more so now we’re here!’
Bob stood up straight as Becks placed the bags in the hole and began kicking soil in to fill it up. The folds of his grey robe stretching over hard slabs of muscle. ‘We should adopt the vernacular language of 1194 from this point onwards.’
Becks nodded. ‘Affirmative.’ They both froze for a moment, both blinking, both busy retrieving data. Finally they stirred to life once more.
Liam shrugged. ‘Are you two all done?’
Bob nodded. ‘Ay, serrr. We now can speake bothe in Auld Anglishe.’
‘En outra,’ said Becks, finishing the plastic-bag burial and stamping down the dark soil with a wooden-clogged foot, ‘nous sommes en mesure de parler en francais Normand.’
‘Well.’ Liam grinned. ‘I am impressed!’ He nodded towards the thin smudged column coming from the stone chimney, and for the first time his nose detected the inviting odour of wood smoke. ‘Is that the way we need to go, then?’
Becks nodded. ‘Oui. C’est la destination. Continu tu doit, trois cents, cinquante-six pieds dans cette direction.’
‘Ay,’ added Bob. ‘Seeke ye, beyonde yon furlong we sholde find — ’
Liam raised his hands. ‘I can’t understand a thing you’re saying now.’
‘Three hundred and fifty-six feet in that direction,’ said Becks. ‘We should be entering the perimeter of the Kirklees Priory, according to boundary data of that time.’
‘Ahh.’ Liam scratched at his ribs, itching already from the coarse material. ‘Much better. Could I suggest … while it’s just us on our own, you speak normal?’
Bob and Becks looked at each other and exchanged a nod.
‘Shall we?’ He rubbed his cold hands together. ‘And maybe whoever’s over there can rustle us up a nice bacon sandwich or so.’
2001, New York
‘So what happens now?’ asked Adam.
Maddy pointed to the displacement machinery. ‘We get ready to open up the portal again in about half an hour … it should be fully recharged by then.’
He looked confused. ‘I thought you said we give them anhour before bringing them back?’
‘Time doesn’t run the same,’ said Sal. ‘That sort of confused me at first as well.’
‘For them an hour will pass,’ said Maddy, ‘but doesn’t mean we need to wait an hour. In about thirty minutes we’ll be charged up. I could send you back in time to some point and arrange to bring you back a whole week later. But the moment after I sent you, I could tap in the timestamp for one week later and open up the portal again. For you a week would’ve passed. For us here, just a few seconds. It’s not, like, symmetrical, if you see what I mean?’
He nodded. ‘I get it.’
She turned to the desk mic. ‘Bob, can you set the data for the first return window?’
› Affirmative, Maddy.
She turned back to Adam. ‘Knowing them, they’ll probably miss the first window anyway.’ She huffed a laugh. ‘I don’t know why I bother.’
Adam looked at the desk cluttered with soda cans, pizza boxes and scraps of paper. ‘It’s almost as messy as my apartment.’
Sal sighed. ‘I clean up — Maddy’s the untidy one.’
He sat down beside them and stared at the monitors. ‘So you’re patched into the Internet?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Maddy clicked with a mouse and minimized a couple of dialogue boxes on one of the monitors. ‘Access to pretty much every linked database in the world, I think.’
‘Good God,’ he said, pointing at one of the screens, ‘is that — is that what I think it is?’
‘The White House intranet? Yup.’
‘You’ve actually hacked into it?’
‘I’d like to say I managed to do that myself — ’ she chuckled — ‘but the field office has always had a line in since we joined.’ She clicked the mouse. ‘For a laugh I go rooting around in President Bush’s email inbox.’ She giggled. ‘He likes sending pictures of cats doing funny things to his buddies. Check it out.’
Adam sputtered laughter at an image of a sleeping kitten on a window-sill with a tiny Yankees baseball cap perched on its head.
‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ uttered Adam.
She smiled and clicked the mouse to close the president’s inbox; she knew there were emails buried in there that hinted about tomorrow’s events — events a person from the present shouldn’t know about. Not today, anyway. She needn’t have worried, though; Adam’s mind was swimming around elsewhere. He turned to look at the perspex tube and the rac
k of wires on the floor beside it.
‘So, Maddy, you said we can actually talk to them? While they’re in the past?’
‘Uh-huh. If we know where and when they are, it means we can aim a precise beam of tachyon particles at the point in space they would have been in eight-hundred-and-whatever years ago. The support units are — ’
‘The big ape and the tall girl who nearly broke my finger.’
She laughed. ‘Yes, them … They can both detect tachyon particles. They have embedded tech in their heads. They’re sort of clones with computers for brains.’
‘But they can’t send tachyon beams back to us,’ said Sal.
‘Why not?’
‘The energy it requires,’ said Maddy. ‘And they’d need a transmitter. Can’t fit all of that and a supercomputer in their heads.’
‘So how do they talk back to you?’
‘They can’t. We sort of operate blind on that front. We just have to hope they’re sticking to the plan.’
‘But they can talk to us,’ said Sal. ‘Kind of.’
Maddy winced a little. She really didn’t want Adam knowing too much about the way they did things.
‘Liam did it last time,’ continued Sal. ‘He left a message for us to find all the way back in the late Cret-’
‘Yes,’ Maddy cut in, stepping lightly on Sal’s toes to shut her up. No need for Adam to know just how far back in time their technology could take a person. ‘Yes. We’ve used what we call drop points before. A document or some kind of artefact that we know they can interact with in the past and that we know to closely observe in the present.’
Adam’s face creased thoughtfully for a moment. ‘So … that’s what you think the Voynich Manuscript is? Something somebody’s using to communicate with the future?’
She nodded. ‘Uh-huh. It might be. We just need to know.’
He shook his head silently. ‘I just … this is … I’m struggling here to take this all in.’
Maddy clacked her tongue. ‘It’s a lot. I was kind of the same at first.’
‘Me too,’ said Sal.
Adam grinned. ‘I knew — all this time I knew you were … for real. That I wasn’t mad. But this really is … absolutely — ’
‘Incredible?’
He giggled like an over-sugared toddler. ‘Yes. My God, that’s it. That’s the only word that does this any justice. Incredible.’
Sal sighed. ‘You get used to it after a while.’
CHAPTER 21
1194, Kirklees Priory, Yorkshire
They watched from either side of the path, mouths slung open in curious ‘o’s — a dozen monks who’d been tending lanes of withered grapevines as Liam, flanked by his two support units, strode up the dirt path towards the priory’s main entrance.
‘Morning!’ called out Liam self-consciously.
One of the monks dropped his basket and scrambled across the vegetable gardens towards a nearby barn, stammering Latin blessings to himself. The others shrank back, their eyes darting nervously across all three of them, but lingering unhappily on Becks.
Standing in the doorway was a young lad. Liam guessed he was a year younger than himself, watching them approach, fear making his eyes comically round.
‘Ye … c-c-canaught entre h-h-hier!’ the boy stammered.
Liam cocked his head then turned to Becks. ‘Did he just say we can’t enter here?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Well, it’s not so hard, then, this Old English.’ He turned back to the young man, wearing the white robe and black apron of a Cistercian monk. ‘Can … you … understand … me?’ he said slowly.
The boy swallowed, eyes darting left and right, and up at Bob’s expressionless big-boned face. Eventually his shaking head nodded. ‘A-aye …’
Liam relaxed a little. This is going to be easier than I thought.
‘We’re after someone called Cabot. He’s supposed to live here. Do you know him?’
The boy’s eyes narrowed.
‘This is Kirklees Priory, right? We got the right place, have we?’
‘Kirk-laigh,’ the boy uttered.
‘Yes, Kirklees Priory? This place?’
The boy nodded slowly. ‘Aye, Kirk-laigh.’
‘And Cabot? Is there a man called Cabot living here?’
The frowning again.
‘Information,’ uttered Becks quietly.
‘What?’
‘Your pronunciation of the name may be incorrect.’
‘Well then, how would you say it?’
‘Try Car-boh.’
The boy’s eyes widened at the sound of that. ‘S-seek ye … S-Sebastien Cabot?’
Liam shrugged. ‘Aye, that’s him.’
The boy pointed a wobbling finger towards a low, thatched stable on the far side of the gardens. ‘Yonder … B-Brother Sebastien tends to the h-horses.’
Liam handed the boy a broad smile. ‘Thanking you.’
They crossed the gardens, watching the silent monks edging back from them. In the stillness a cluster of loose chickens happily pecked and clucked brainlessly. Liam pulled open the barn door; it creaked deafeningly in the still grey morning. Inside it was dark save for faint dapples of weak light that had found a way through threadbare patches of thatch above. He could hear the hoarse rasp of animals breathing.
‘Is there a Say-bas-tee-en Cay-bow in here?’ He cringed at his own mangling of the pronunciation.
‘Aye!’ a voice called back. Grating and deep. ‘Who seekes him?’
‘Uhh … my name’s Liam.’
He heard the scrape and rustle of movement from somewhere among dark stalls and a moment later a robed figure emerged into the thin light of the open doorway.
Cabot wore the same Cistercian robe and apron, but looked unlike the other pale-faced monks still standing amid furrowed lanes of turned soil like forlorn ghosts. He stood an inch shorter than Liam, but a great deal broader; wide shoulders accustomed to bearing old muscle. A greying beard covered pockmarked and leathery skin, and battle-hardened muddy green eyes stared out beneath a thick brow broken by a livid pink scar that ran diagonally across the bridge of his nose and down across his right cheek.
‘Liam, is it?’ he growled softly.
‘Liam O’Connor. But you can call me Liam.’
‘Liam, ye say?’ he said again, rolling the name around his mouth. ‘Tis a name I’ve not heard before.’ Cabot glanced over his shoulder at Bob. ‘Ye have the look of a man-at-arms, sir?’
‘Nay,’ replied Bob. The rumble of his deep baritone stirred the horses in the darkness.
‘Mr Cabot, is there a place we can talk? Somewhere …’ Liam looked back over his shoulder at a dozen faces, still slack-jawed, still standing motionless with garden tools held in their hands, watching and listening curiously. ‘Somewhere private?’
Cabot glanced at Becks. ‘She cannot enter the priory itself. My brothers seek to avoid distractions of the flesh. The stables will do.’
The old man nodded and waved them into the dim interior of the stables. At the far end of the long building were guest lodgings, little more than four bare stone walls, a couple of wooden cots softened with a hay-stuffed sack and a tiny rectangular window in the gable wall that let in the poorest glimmer of light. He sat down on one of the cots and gestured for the others to do likewise.
‘Dark times as these,’ Cabot began quietly, ‘my brothers outside are full of fear. Evil stalks these woods, stalks this country. So ’tis — ’ he spread his hands — ‘we are all most cautious of strangers.’ His eyes narrowed and the scar across his brow flexed. ‘Ye know of my name, Liam of Connor. Tell me how is that?’
Liam gave a small defensive shrug. ‘That’s a little difficult to explain, Mr Cabot. But … well, we came here because we got a message to find you.’
‘A message, say? By who?’
‘Well, that’s the thing. We don’t exactly know.’
‘So, ye seek me. Now ye have me. For what reason is it?’
Liam made a face. ‘Not really sure of that either.’
Cabot shook his head, confused for a moment, then he laughed. ‘What good is this, then? I have horses I need tend to this morning.’ He made to get up.
Liam decided to play their trump card. ‘Mr Cabot, have you heard of a thing called the Voynich Manuscript?’
Cabot stopped and resumed his seat, considering Liam’s words for a moment then shook his head. ‘Voynich? I have not heard of such a thing.’
‘Well then — ’ Liam bit his lip — ‘have you written some sort of important manuscript?’
‘Of course not!’ Cabot laughed. ‘I wield a sword far better than I do a quill.’
‘Well, how about someone else here? Is anyone working on any manuscripts? Scrolls of any kind?’
He shook his head again. ‘We keep scrolls of prayers and records of the priory. This is a place of quiet devotion to God. That is all. Now … if that be the last of yer questions I must ask ye and yer fellows to go about yer business,’ he said, hefting himself wearily to his feet.
Liam cursed quietly. Almost as an afterthought he had one last try. ‘Mr Cabot, what do you know of Pandora?’
The word stopped Cabot in his tracks. He glanced at Liam, at the other two. Finally, in a voice almost as soft as a whisper he spoke. ‘Ye know of this?’
Great, what do I say now? Liam decided the only thing he could do was to bluff his way. He nodded sternly. ‘Oh yes, Mr Cabot … I know all about Pandora.’
‘These two?’ the old man asked, a furtive glance again at Bob and Becks. They both took Liam’s lead and nodded.
Cabot pulled absently on his beard, studying Liam silently. ‘Ye do not have the look of the order about ye, lad. Ye look barely old enough to be a squire.’
Order? What order? Jay-zus, what do I say now?
‘But … ye do, sir,’ he said to Bob. ‘A fighting man if ever I saw one. Ye have come back?’
Bob glanced at Liam for help. All Liam could do was nod vigorously for him to say something.