Day of the Predator

by Alex Scarrow

  ‘No.’ Liam shook his head. ‘She’s not that sort of a robot. Not al wires and motors and metal bits. She’s an organic unit, what the agency cal a genetical y engineered unit.’ He looked around at the pale faces. ‘You’ve heard of that term, have you?’

  that term, have you?’

  ‘Wel , duh,’ sighed Keisha. ‘Any kid who watches the Cartoon Channel knows that term.’

  Liam shrugged apologetical y. ‘Anyway, she’s what we cal a meat robot. Flesh and blood, so she is. But she has a real computer up in her head.’

  ‘And what? You sayin’ her programmin’ made her go for Laura with the spear?’ said Juan.

  ‘That’s right. She was concerned about al the contamination we were causing, and without me being there to discuss it with her she had to make a decision on her own.’

  ‘Concerned?’ said Jonah ‘Concerned? Dude, I’d hate to see what she’s like when she’s real y mad at something.’

  Liam ignored that.

  ‘Liam, you said contamination,’ said Kel y. ‘You mean, creating evidence we’ve been here? Like our camp and the bridge?’

  ‘That’s right. Every cut, every scrape, every footprint – in fact, everything we do – just our being here could potential y alter history in such a way that the future is total y destroyed.’ Liam glanced at the motionless silhouet e of the support unit standing guard in the middle of the clearing. ‘It’s a basic command for her … like, I suppose, like one of the ten commandments would be to us.’‘Thou shalt not mess around with time,’ chuckled a dark-skinned boy cal ed Ranjit. ‘That would be a cool eleventh commandment to have.’

  eleventh commandment to have.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jonah. ‘Thy shalt not kil your ancestor, for he begets –’

  ‘You think it’s funny?’ cut in Howard sharply. The others looked at him, taken aback at the outburst. Thus far he’d been one of the quieter members of the group. ‘You think messing with time is just some sort of a game? It’s the most insane thing man has ever done.’ He stopped himself short. Took a breath and dial ed it back a bit.

  ‘What I’m saying is … it’s just pret y insane, time travel.’

  Liam nodded sombrely. ‘He’s quite right. It is insane. Although a man cal ed Waldstein is the rst man to travel through time –’ he looked at Edward, the smal est face around the re – ‘it al begins with you. It’s al based on work that you wil do one day.’

  ‘So … theoretical y,’ said Kel y, ‘if Edward had, for example, died in that explosion back in the reactor, and not gone on to do his work, then this Waldstein guy would not have invented a time machine?’

  ‘And we’d not have been blasted back into dinosaur times?’ said Laura.

  Liam noticed one or two heads turning towards the young boy, giving him a long, silent stare that looked like careful deliberation. Liam could see where this conversation might go.

  ‘There can only be one correct history, one correct timeline. And, whether we like it or not, that timeline includes an Edward Chan who becomes a maths genius, and a Mr Waldstein who makes that rst machine, so he and a Mr Waldstein who makes that rst machine, so he does. That’s how it goes. That’s how it has to go.’ Liam stared at them al , each in turn. ‘And that’s why you can trust me … why you can trust Becks, to be sure. Our primary goal now is to make sure that this young lad gets back home to 2015 to do what he has to do. And that means the rest of you too.’

  ‘So, if there’s, like, a primary goal … then there’s a secondary goal,’ said a dark-skinned girl with long black hair and a pierced upper lip that glinted with several metal studs. It was the rst time he’d heard her speak today. Quiet, pensive, she reminded him a lit le of Sal. She was stil wearing her name tag: JASMINE.

  ‘There’s no other goal, Jasmine, I promise,’ said Liam.

  ‘Me and Becks want to get you al back home, so we do.’

  But that’s not strictly true, is it, Liam?

  He and Becks had spoken in private earlier. He’d managed to reason with her calmly – to talk her down from proceeding any further with her self-decided mission objective to kil them al , then herself. But it was a compromise. A perfectly logical compromise that successful y reconciled the con icting protocols in her head.

  ‘In six months’ time,’ he’d agreed with her, ‘if they haven’t rescued us by then, before your six months is up and you have to self-terminate … then, yes, you’re right …

  I suppose we’d al have to die. I’l even help you.’ He’d smiled at her. ‘Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that, eh?’

  The camp re crackled noisily.

  The camp re crackled noisily.

  ‘So, there you go, al friends now, right?’ said Jonah.

  ‘Even robo-girl.’ He grinned. ‘Now about a nice sing-song. A round of “Kumbayah”?’ he added sarcastical y. ‘I’l take the lead. Kumbayah, my Lord! … Kumba–’

  Someone threw a chip of dried dino dung across the re at him.

  CHAPTER 30

  Wednesday, 2001, New York

  A Wednesday. Maddy realized she hadn’t seen one of those in quite a while. Since she’d been on a plane trip back home to her folks in Boston, in fact. Since she’d become a TimeRider.

  She looked down the agpole approach to the Statue of Liberty’s star-shaped podium and spot ed only half a dozen other people. She’d been here once before, on the same school trip that they’d visited the Museum of Natural History. It had been a tedious day ful of queuing. Queuing to get ferry tickets, queuing to get on a ferry over to Liberty Island, queuing to get inside the podium building beneath Liberty’s feet and look at the smal museum’s exhibits. Queuing once again to get a look up inside the statue itself. A pret y dul day of standing around, being shoved, bumped and barged into, waiting to look at things she actual y had precious lit le interest in. Today though there were no queues.

  The island was al but deserted. Half a dozen ferries had arrived throughout the day, each o oading no more than a handful of muted whispering visitors. And, even then, their eyes had been more on the column of smoke coming from across the bay, coming from Manhat an, than they had across the bay, coming from Manhat an, than they had been on the giant copper-green statue in front of them. Maddy took another slurp of the cooling polystyrene cup of co ee in her hands. Horrible. She’d lost count of how many she’d bought from the stal opposite the embarkation pier. She was almost on rst-name terms with the bewildered-looking man behind the counter who’d served her every time. He certainly should know by now she took it white with three sugars.

  Come on, Foster … where the hel are you?

  Through the morning she’d been hopeful as each ferry had arrived. But not now; it was nearly four in the afternoon. Another hour or so and the Statue of Liberty’s lit le museum would be closing, the last ferry back across the harbour get ing ready to leave.

  She was beginning to realize today had been wasted, loitering around like this. Cluelessly hovering around the podium’s entrance in hope that the old man would turn up. Never mind, she told herself, now at least she knew that Foster hadn’t spent the rst Wednesday of his

  ‘retirement’ out here. She’d head back to their archway. Today, Wednesday, it would be nothing more than an empty brick archway with a TO LET sign pasted on the rol er-shut er door, and outside that shut er door she’d wait until eight in the evening when a shimmering portal would appear, ready to take her back into Monday again. Then she’d do this al again, try Wednesday once more, but next time she’d loiter outside the Empire State Building.

  Building.

  Her eyes drifted o the tourists as they passed by her and into the podium, pausing as they did to look once again at the pal of smoke in the sky.

  She remembered this day, remembered the day after. She’d been what? Eight? Nine? Mom and Dad at home al day, sit ing in front of the TV, watching as dust-smeared emergency workers scrabbled at the edge of the smouldering wreck, pul ing twisted spars of stil -warm metal away in the
hope of nding someone alive. She’d been playing on the oor of the lounge with her TechMeccano set, trying to build her version of a Transformer, half her at ention on what she was doing, half on her parents: Mom sobbing and Dad cursing.

  And here she was again. Di erent place, same day. An odd urge occurred to her. What if she found a way through the security cordon around the ruin of the Twin Towers and found a TV camera and reporter to be stopped and interviewed by. She could wave at her eight-year-old self, wave at her mom and dad watching the TV. She could reassure them that she wasn’t going to die along with 137

  other people aboard Flight 95 in nine years’ time. Tel them she was going to be OK.

  She shook her head. Nice idea. But she wasn’t going to do that.

  She turned her thoughts towards more pressing mat ers. Liam and the support unit. Bob had assured her that the copy of his AI in the female unit would make the same recommendation to Liam as he would: to nd a discreet recommendation to Liam as he would: to nd a discreet way to make contact. Discreet … because a too-obvious message, a message that stood out above the background noise of history, could signi cantly a ect the timeline. But there was the problem. A subtle message careful y laid down in whatever historical period they were in, laid down for only her and Sal to nd …?

  I mean, where the hel are we supposed to start looking for something like that?

  If they’d only been bumped back less than 150 years, then perhaps there was a message waiting for them once more in the Museum of Natural History’s guest books. That was something Sal had decided to try and check out. But what if they’d been knocked further back in time?

  Five hundred years ago? A thousand years ago? What was in the middle of Texas a thousand years ago? A lot of bu alo, she guessed, and some Indians. But certainly no visitor guest books for them to discreetly slip a message into. A ‘get us out of here’ scrawled across an ancient Navaho tribal history rug was almost certainly something the support unit would NOT recommend to Liam. Not unless they wanted every historian studying Native American history discussing the message at some symposium.

  Subtle. It could only be subtle.

  But, she sighed to herself, too subtle and how were they ever going to nd it?

  Unless it’s a message that’s meant to nd us. She looked up from her co ee.

  She looked up from her co ee.

  … Find us …

  ‘My God,’ she whispered to herself. Maybe that’s what they’d try to do. A message addressed to its nder, whomever that might be. A message that perhaps might promise a reward of some kind to the nder provided it was delivered to a certain location on a certain date. A message that might promise untold wealth, access to an incredible time-travel technology? And think about it. Such a message would be too important, too powerful, to become public knowledge, wouldn’t it? A message like that would become a closely guarded secret, right? A secret handed down by the original nder to his o spring, like a dark family secret or a horrendous supernatural curse. Handed down from one to another, until nal y the message is passed to someone who is able to make their way to a certain backstreet in Brooklyn on 10 September 2001 and gently knock on their door, cal ing out to see if anyone’s inside.

  Oh my God … it’s possible, isn’t it?

  And what if that happened while she was standing out here like a complete lemon? Waiting for Foster to turn up, when quite probably he was never going to. Computer Bob was right. That’s what he’d said, wasn’t it? ‘Just wait.’

  ‘Oh, you freakin’ idiot, Maddy,’ she hissed to herself, tossing the polystyrene cup into the bin beside her and heading down the walkway towards the pier.

  CHAPTER 31

  65 mil ion years BC, jungle

  ‘You can do what?’ said Liam.

  Becks hefted the log up in her taut arms and held it steady as Liam lashed it in place with a hand-woven length of rope made from the species of vine they’d found dangling from virtual y every tree around the clearing.

  ‘I believe it is possible for me to calculate when in time we are with a very high degree of accuracy.’

  He wrapped the rope tightly round the log, tugging it hard so that it shu ed up against its neighbour. The palisade wal so far stretched only a dozen feet: about twenty logs, each just under eight inches in diameter and al roughly about nine feet tal . When they were done, they’d have a circular enclosure about four yards across –

  large enough for al sixteen of them to huddle inside should something nasty nd its way on to their island and they needed somewhere to retreat to.

  ‘How?’ asked Liam.

  ‘I have a detailed record of al the variables during the time of the explosion.’

  ‘Variables?’

  ‘Data. Speci cal y, directly after we arrived here. The particle decay rate.’

  particle decay rate.’

  Liam cocked an eyebrow. ‘I haven’t a clue what that means, Becks.’

  She walked over to a dwindling pile of logs and e ortlessly picked up another. They were going to need more. Across the clearing he could see Whitmore and several of the students carrying one between them, stumbling across the lumpy ground towards them. She slammed one end of the log down into the soft soil with a heavy thud, next to the last log, and Liam began to lash it into their wal .

  ‘I have a detailed record of the explosion. The number and density of tachyon particles that we were exposed to in 2015 and the number and density of tachyon particles that emerged here alongside ourselves.’

  Liam looked at her and shrugged. ‘Assume I’m a child that knows nothing, Becks.’

  She looked at him and he thought he caught her rol ing her eyes at his stupidity: a gesture the AI must have learned from Sal back when it was computer-bound and its visual world was what it picked up from the one webcam.

  ‘Tachyon particles decay at a constant rate. That is why it takes greater amounts of energy to beam a signal further into the past.’

  Liam tugged hard on the vine rope, cinching the knot tightly. ‘I get that. So, if these particles die out at a steady rate, that means …?’

  ‘I am able to calculate how many particles decayed and, from that, determine how far in time we were sent.’

  from that, determine how far in time we were sent.’

  He grinned. ‘Real y? You can do that?’

  Becks looked up and tried mimicking his uneven smile.

  ‘I have the processing power to do this.’

  ‘And we’l know exactly when we are?’

  ‘To an accuracy level of one thousandth of a per cent.’

  Liam shook his head in wonder. ‘Jay-zus, that metal brain of yours is a bloody marvel, so it is!’

  She seemed pleased with that. ‘Is that a compliment, Liam O’Connor?’

  He punched her arm lightly. ‘Of course it is! Don’t know what I’d do without you.’

  Her gaze drifted o across the clearing for a moment then back at him. ‘Thank you.’

  He nished lashing the log and waited for her to pick up another and slam it down heavily beside the last one.

  ‘So what? We’l actual y know what day we arrived in the past? Even what time?’

  ‘Negative. I am unable to give that precise a calculation.

  ’ ‘OK. We’l know to the nearest week or something?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘The nearest month?’

  ‘Negative.’

  ‘Year?’

  ‘I can calculate to the nearest thousand years.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can calculate our current time down to the nearest –’

  He cut her o . ‘I heard you the rst time. But … but He cut her o . ‘I heard you the rst time. But … but that’s no good to us, is it? I mean, even if we could somehow get a message to the future and tel them which thousandth year we’re in, nding us here would be like trying to nd a needle in a haystack!’ He slumped down against the wal . ‘If they tried opening a window at the same time every day fo
r every year for a thousand years that’d be … that’d be …’

  ‘Three hundred and sixty-ve thousand at empts,’ said Becks. ‘Add another two hundred and fty at empts for leap years.’

  ‘Right! That many. Jeeeez, they’d never nd us!’

  She squat ed down on her haunches beside him. ‘You are correct. It is extremely unlikely,’ she con rmed.

  ‘So that’s it, then?’ he said, sagging. The moment of believing they might have the beginnings of a way out was gone now, leaving him feeling even more hopeless than before. ‘We’re stuck here.’

  ‘Until my six-month mission timer reaches –’

  ‘Yes, yes … I know. Then you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.’

  A hand reached out and gently grasped his arm. ‘I am sorry, Liam O’Connor. It does not make me happy to think of terminating these humans. Particularly you.’

  He sighed. ‘Wel … I s’pose that counts for something,’

  he mut ered. ‘Thanks.’

  They watched as the others nal y arrived with the log, and between them heaved it on to the ground. Whitmore wiped sweat from his forehead and recovered his breath. wiped sweat from his forehead and recovered his breath.

  ‘Good God, I’m beat. Roughly how many more of these logs do you think you’re going to need to nish that?’

  Becks turned and eyed the wal for a moment. ‘Seventynine.’

  He pu ed out his cheeks. ‘Seventy-nine? You sure?’

  She nodded. ‘I am sure.’

  ‘Right,’ Whitmore pu ed. ‘Right, come on then, you lot,’

  he said to the others. ‘Back to work.’

  Liam and Becks watched them go. ‘It would be possible for the eld o ce to narrow down the number of candidate windows,’ said Becks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They do not need to try opening three hundred and sixty-ve thousand, two hundred and fty windows. I am certain the AI back in the eld o ce would make the same recommendation.’

  ‘Same recommendation? What?’

  ‘A density probe. They could at empt a brief scan of each day. Any scans that returned a varying density signal warning would indicate movement of some object at that location. It is possible they would consider density warning signals as best-case candidates.’