Chapter Twenty
I left Tori at Haleakala’s volcano observation platform. She was deep in concentration on her plans for getting inside MCF. I was intrigued by increased activity at TEP One’s heli-port and wanted to see what was happening.
Boy, my dad would have loved this place. It was just the sort of technology he had predicted. Skimmers would have blown his mind. Haleakala's harassed landing crews were hosting a succession of them bringing military specialists and government ministers from around the world. I realised ESTA must be leaking like a sieve. Rumours of a crisis at TEP One were bouncing around the intelligence community from China to Argentina. Worried Governments from across the globe wanted answers.
Circling serenely above the raucous flock of uninvited visitors, Rommy Becks divided his time between smiling reassuringly, slapping palms with political leaders and dealing with the most deadly crisis in world history. I watched him handing out Hawaiian fruit cocktails and nibbles, as grass skirted girls placed perfumed leis of white orchids around the necks of grim faced emissaries. Despite his avuncular smiles and hearty handshakes, I could see from Rommy’s secret glances that he had had more than enough presidential and prime ministerial arrivals for one day.
Tori joined me, her eyes sparkling with enquiry at the buzzing, wing-less skimmers darting and hovering over the heli-pad. Like a couple of tourists, we watched the arrivals and enjoyed the crisp mountain air. Rommy moved quickly to join us, evidently seeking a moment of privacy. He glanced at me and rolled his eyes, as he pressed his earpiece to his ear and spoke into his head-mike. ‘Find me Bud Grolsch. Tell him to come to Observation on Skimdeck One - quickly.
Bud Grolsch was ESTA’s chief of security. A minute later he arrived, breathless and sweating. Rommy took his elbow and directed the ex-New York cop to where we were standing. He winked at me and tapped his nose with his index finger. He didn’t seem to mind Tori and me eavesdropping.
‘You see that skimmer over there, Chief?’ he said, nodding covertly towards an aircraft on the far side of the heli-pad, furthest from the buildings. ‘I’d like it to mysteriously explode.’
Tori gasped and gripped my arm.
‘Make it look impressive, but don’t damage it too much. I only want footage for the news reels - not actual damage to the facility.’
I couldn’t see Grolsch’s eyes behind his mirror lens sunglasses, but I can imagine that they would have narrowed thoughtfully, for I saw a slight, crafty smile flick across his lips. ‘When it blows, Doc,’ he said calmly, ‘I’m afraid that, as your security chief, I’ll have to close the Skimdeck to all incoming flights and insist that you evacuate non-essential personnel.’
Rommy pouted and raised his eyebrows quizzically. ‘If that’s your advice Chief, I’ll have to go along with it. You’re the expert.’
The old cop passed by us, his face impassive. ‘Get ready for fireworks kids,’ he said from the side of his mouth. ‘And I don’t mean just the pyrotechnics.'
He was right too. Half an hour later, political fireworks were shooting off in all directions. There were top level protests and demands for Rommy’s resignation because of his refusal to overrule his security chief. As usual the loudest squealers were the British, American, and Iranian envoys, closely followed by the French. Rommy stuck to his guns and took it all calmly. He had waved them all farewell, successfully hiding his delight as a bulldozer pushed the smouldering wreckage of the Pacific Airway’s Skimmer out of harm’s way.
With the base secure and the visitors gone, Rommy called another strategy meeting, this time on a terrace overlooking Haleakala’s volcanic shoulders. In the thin crystal air the sun blazed down on a candy striped awning shading our conference table. The mountain breeze tugged playfully at the sunshade’s scalloped edges. Eight thousand feet below us, the lush cattle pastures of up-country Maui were spread thickly over the foothills. Pristine clapboard ranch houses and smart wooden barns were dotted below like a scatter of toys, strung together by white rail fences. A distant road snaked into the cowboy town of Makawao, where board fronted shops looked as if they were dressed up for a movie set in some cowboy western.
Tori and I took our seats with Vart and Doctor Paliana. Sheets of electronic paper denoted each place at the table. They all seemed to have text on them but mine. I fiddled with it, trying to work out how to switch it on. Tori giggled and demonstrated by running her I.D. badge over her sheet. I gave up on mine and turned to her. She looked lovely with the breeze teasing her softly curled hair. 'Does this count as a date?' I whispered.
Rommy stood up and introduced Doctor Anwar, and thanked him formally for coming. The doctor smiled, nodding shyly and acknowledging old friends around the table. His glance at Tori and I was cursory, and I felt a shudder of concern, recalling Tori’s earlier warning to the group. Retaking his seat, Rommy first gave an overview of the situation, then began outlining his proposed strategy, seeking opinions at every stage. From his “Chair” console, he directed images, maps, diagrams, and graphs onto the electronic paper before us, and up onto a large monitor screen above the table. Occasionally someone would drag and drop with a finger, or sketch something on their pad to make a point, or add to Rommy’s version. Doctor Anwar stared at his pad not speaking.
With Vart as mission leader, Tori and I brought unique qualities to the mission. We knew the twenty-first century, and the people involved, but above all Tori had actual knowledge of the location. Apart from Doctor Anwar, nobody had been deeper into MCF or seen more of its organisation and personnel. We all had TM experience too, and my time in the stone-age had made me fitter and tougher than I had ever been. I suspected that only Vart could out do me.
No one held any elusions about the mission. We all knew this would be the last chance to make our world safe. What’s more, time was slipping away. Any second Mackenzie Carmichael could pull the plug on our world and replace it with his own. All he needed was an Event Generator and enough electrical power to run it. Once he had that, he could apply the necessary algorithm to create the world he wanted. Changing time even a fraction, changes everything completely.
Rommy showed evidence for his belief that MCF had built and successfully tested their own EG, Event Generator. The screen and the electronic sheet before me filled with numbers, column after column scrolling through. To be honest, I didn’t get it, but he claimed it showed that MCF had used Time Wands without tapping into ESTA’s EGs at any of the five working TEPs.
Time Wands are like remote controls for a TV set. All they can do is switch the set on and let you select a programme. Time Wands trigger an Event Generator. It is these huge, power greedy machines, buried deep underground, that do the work. They generate the cosmic event that enables an object to pass from one time to another as easily as walking through a door.
Rommy had explained it all to me, but frankly he lost me after about ten seconds. Vart’s explanation, later on, was much better. The way he put it was this, an Event Generator hunts space for naturally occurring microscopic black holes. When it finds one it stretches it between times or locations like bits of hose pipe. The black holes have to be the spinning type, otherwise they will just crush to oblivion anything that enters them.
So if Mackenzie Carmichael has got his own EG, and can hijack enough electrical power from the Uk's national grid, it means that at any second it could all be over for our world. Everything would change: governments, organisations, politics, people. Everything would be different. Yet, and here’s the spooky bit, none of us would notice a thing. In fact it could already have happened? You don’t know! You never can! You never will.
Because Mackenzie Carmichael is a madman, my guess is that he would make himself an emperor-god, ruling the entire planet. So, as long as I never see that, I don’t feel so bad, but then, if I did see it, I wouldn’t know that I didn’t want to see it, would I? Me and you and the rest of us would all be doing whatever he wanted us to do, and we'd think it was perfectly normal and had always been like that sinc
e Adam and Kirsty.
Ok, just kidding. I know it was Eve.
A technician sitting opposite me sniffed and wiped her nose to hide her tears. I saw Tori smile and give her an encouraging nod.
‘Once you’re in, you must find that first Time Wand, the original one Mackenzie Carmichael stole. Nothing but that matters. If you can capture him too that would be a bonus of course, but he is a secondary target.’ He touched his pad and flashed a picture of the old Time Wand onto our pads. ‘Study this image carefully. Notice the heavier look and the clumsy housing on the side. All the old Mark Ones had this unbalanced appearance. Mackenzie Carmichael has it. It’s the only one left, so you can’t fail to recognise it, but check for that serial number. It could be a copy.’
He placed his knuckles on the table and leaned towards us. ‘When you find it and you’ve got any prisoners in custody, you must go back to Vart’s time before you leap to Haleakala.’ He paused and looked around at the faces turned up to him. ‘I can’t emphasise this enough. If you don’t do it precisely this way, we will not be the ones waiting here for you. In fact this place might not be here at all. You could find this is a very different institution. You could even be bringing your prisoners to their friends.’
'According to our forecasts and the computer modelling Tanya and her group have been doing,’ he said, acknowledging the tearful technician opposite me, ‘Taking MC and that Time Wand back to Vart’s time first is the only way to be sure we override any traps and tricks that MCF might have laid for us. Any more questions?’ He looked round the table coming finally to Tori, Vart and me. ‘You are the only ones who can do this. Everything depends on you.’
Vart immediately jumped up from his chair. ‘Come with me, you two,‘ he said. ‘We’ve got some gear to collect.’
We followed him into the building and down concrete steps to a basement firing range. A serving hatch in the back wall opened onto a store room fitted out with racking. Its shelves were stuffed with boxes and equipment. There were racks of uniforms, rifles, helmets, pistols, scuba gear and all manner of climbing and survival equipment.
A huffy quartermaster placed a neat stack of kit on the hatch counter. His eager assistant set down another, before running off for a third. ‘Everything's ready for you. For once I was given proper documentation,’ grumbled the quartermaster. 'Doctor Becks appreciates the difficulties of running this armoury, not like some I could mention.'
He slid one of the stacks of kit across the counter to Tori. The main items seemed to comprise a suit of black battle fatigues. At first glance the material looked like black metallic bubble wrap, but instead of convex bubbles it had concave dimples on its surface. ‘Strip to your underwear, remove all metal and put these on.' He turned to Tori, pulling a face that suggested he thought she was some sort of alien. 'You can change in my office, miss.’
Tori thanked him and went off to change. I struggled out of my jeans and pulled on the strange suit. It felt remarkably comfortable.
‘Don't operate the suit until the last moment. It has limited power, eight minutes maximum,' the quartermaster told me.
'Operate the suit? Whaddayer mean?'
‘It’s nano-fab. It creates negative refraction.'
'You mean – invisibility?'
'Of course, what d'you think I meant?'
'Cool! How's it work?'
'I'm not here to educate you.'
Vart stepped in. 'It's a sort of fishnet fabric made of metamaterials. It bends light, and most other wave forms such as microwaves, in the wrong direction.'
The Quartermaster seemed put out by his intervention and took up the commentary. 'It's also bio and chemical resistant, will deflect knife stabs, and is heated and waterproof of course. Once you're wearing it you virtually disappear. Even infrared can’t see you.'
‘Is it moth proof?’ I asked him, thinking I was being funny.
He returned a frosty scowl and handed me what appeared to be a black shiny crash helmet. 'The helmet has full comms., of course, and a vide-visor. It enhances vision and displays an object's range, mass and velocity, as well as its electrical, magnetic, and nuclear properties. Obviously, it's linked to your assault rifle sight for enhanced target display.'
This guy was as gloomy as a funeral. What he lacked in humour he made down for in sourness. With a petulant sneer, he handed me an assault rifle, it felt light and beautifully balanced. Vart explained that it was a photo-stunner. It fired bolts of light. A shot from it was usually not fatal, but would knock out an enemy for several hours. But, the things I liked best were little gadgets called Spinners. These look like cell-phones. They fire billions of binary sequences per second. You can use 'em to unlock digital locks, or disable stuff like; voicac doors, timer fuses, and electronic cuffs. They can even disable Time Wands. Finally they gave us something Vart called a Smoker. It looks like an electric toothbrush. They use it to sniff out traces of a Time Wand leap and calculate a temporal destination fix.
Tori joined us for a quick introduction to the assault rifle, visor, and helmet. She looked great in the black suit. We set off for the large dome room where we would make our leap.
'Sign, sign. You can’t just walk out with all my equipment.'
We signed the Quartermaster's documents. I thanked him and waited a moment to see if he smiled. Guess what?
Yeah, you're right.
I felt a weird mixture of feelings as we headed up to the dome: fear, excitement, and above all relief that at last we were setting off before Mackenzie Carmichael could undo our world. It was sort of uplifting, scary, and humbling too.
At the TM deck we were each given a Time Wand. This allowed us the flexibility to split up and work separately if we needed to. I examined it in my hand and thought of the professor and that warm, happy day at Stonehenge when all this had started. I thought of my dad. How proud he would have been when I won my place on that dig. And boy, what would he say about me now? I remembered when Ryan was just about walking. My dad had him on his knee, showing him a pop-up Stonehenge book. I suppose I'm lucky really. I have more memories of him than my little brother. And since then I’ve travelled millions of miles and centuries of time. Would this be the last leg, I wondered, before going home to Ryan and my mother?
Tori looked remarkably cool and ready for action. Vart had regained that incredible animal alertness I had first seen back in the stone-age. His eyes flitted about, his nostrils flared. The TM Deck-boson gave us a thumbs up, and as the lights dimmed and the dome faded, I closed my eyes and waited for TM.
I felt a slight queasiness during the leap which seemed to take longer than expected, but I found myself precisely on target at the old airfield at Monkton Rudloe. The trouble was I was alone and naked, but for my underpants, vest and socks. My snazzy battle fatigues, helmet, stunner, and all my high tech gear had vanished.
I scuttled into the cover of bushes near a rusty chain link fence and dropped to one knee to take a look around me. ‘Tori! Vart! Where are you?’
I heard someone throwing up in the bushes nearby and Vart appeared wiping his mouth and looking pale. All he had on was a lurid pair of boxer shorts and socks.’
‘Jack?’ The voice was Tori’s, her tone urgent and panicky. It came from a tangle of long grass and bushes behind me. ‘Jack, I need you to come here please.’ She sounded desperate.
I crawled towards the bushes.
‘Stop!’ she yelled in a hoarse whisper. ‘Don’t come any closer.’
I couldn’t see her, but I guessed that she had lost her gear too. What’s up? Have you lost your kit, too?’
‘Yes.’
‘So have we. Somehow everything we got new at Haleakala has not leapt with us. All I’ve got is my old pants and vest. So don’t worry, you can come out, we’re all in the same boat.’
‘Well that’s not exactly true,’ she said. ‘I got rid of all my old clothes because they were dirty and I…’
‘Oh crickey! You’re naked?’ I thought of her hiding in the bush
es in her birthday suit and wished for some defoliant weed killer.
‘You’ve got to help me, Jack.’ She sounded miserable. I felt a like scuzzball over the weed killer thing, but not for long.
‘Of course. Here, take this for a start.’ I took off my vest and tossed it into the scrub. ‘Hang on, I’ll be back.’ I went back to Vart and found him lying on his belly peering out over the old airfield.
‘What happened to our stuff?’
‘Don’t you know?’ he growled grimly.
I suppose I did, but I was trying to avoid facing the reality that was explaining itself to me inside my head. ‘I guess I do know, but let me hear it from you.’
‘It’s more than just our gear – it is everything.’ He rolled on to his side to face me. ‘They’ve done it. The old bastard has actually done it. The world we left on Maui has gone, Jack. They’ve all gone – every one of them. If you met Rommy right now he wouldn’t know you, or me. We’re completely alone. We are the only people on the planet, apart from MC and his Time Deck crew, who know what has happened.’
‘Bugger! I really wanted to try that helmet,’ I quipped, trying to hide my anxiety.
‘OK, first we must find secure shelter, and arm ourselves somehow, so we can hide up while we rethink our strategy. It’s all up to us now Jack. Nobody else on the planet can do this. We’ve gotta undo this mess.’ He looked around the scrub surrounding us. ‘Where’s Tori? Is she OK?’
'We need some clothes,' I said, aware this would be very low on Vart's list of priorities.
Tori joined us, shivering and hugging herself in my vest. ‘A few cars use this lane,’ she told us. ‘Maybe we can stop one and get some. I can't do much in this.’
Vart looked at her and shrugged, unconvinced. 'I suppose so,' he said, and stood to lead the way to the fence.
It only took a few minutes to find a way through the old chain link, but we had to wait almost an hour before a car came along. We had decided that Tori would step out into the lane and flag it down. We thought nobody would resist helping her, especially not dressed in my vest, whereas a mad looking bloke in scuzzy underpants didn't have the same pulling power.
As planned Tori ran out into the middle of the lane and waved her arms about, looking helpless and pathetic - and gorgeous. The driver swerved and stopped his car. Vart and I hid and waited, scared to show ourselves too soon and risk frightening the driver off. It was a large, slightly tipsy man in a checked shirt and jeans that climbed out of the driving seat. He was eyeing Tori with a lascivious leer. I wanted to bust him one, but Vart held me back.
‘Oh my, and what have we here then?’ he said, toddling unsteadily towards her. ‘What’s up then, my lovely, lost all our clothes have we? My word, how did that happen then? Have you been playing naughty doctors and nurses with your boyfriend? Or did your clothes just fall off accidentally? Where is he then – Doctor Dipstick?’
I didn’t like this slime ball, and watched him warily, ready to spring up, but Vart was holding me back. Tori stumbled as if about to swoon. The man grabbed hold of her, but clearly had more on his mind than just stopping her from falling. Tori pulled away from the creep, spun round on one foot and landed a perfect roundhouse karate kick on his jaw. The oaf crumpled, out cold. Vart was astonished. He gave her a round of applause as we stepped from hiding. Tori bowed, then remembering she was almost naked ran to hide behind the car.
‘What a jerk,’ she cried from hiding. ‘Did you see what he did? The creep.’
I was taking off the guy’s jeans and trainers for myself. ‘Do you always do that on a first date?’ I joked.
‘Ergh. It makes me sick to think of it,’ she said, creeping out of hiding to inspect clothing options. With a sneer of revulsion she rejected his underpants but took his socks and shirt. Vart searched his car and came up with a penknife, and a box of matches. From the car-boot we selected a tyre lever, a can of petrol, and for some reason, Vart also insisted on taking the car-jack.
Tori took a filthy, oil stained blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders like a mink wrap, giving it instant chic. Then ripping it off she tossed it back. ‘We can’t take all his stuff, even if he is a creep,’ she said. I agreed and emptied the contents of his jeans’ pockets onto the driving seat.
‘Don’t feel too bad,’ Vart said, when MC is out of action, it’ll all be OK again.’
‘We should move him away from here,’ I said. ‘Put him in his car. I’ll drive it back down the hill a bit.’
'Can you drive?' Tori queried.
'Probably.'
We lifted him onto the back seat, and after a few crashed gears and kangaroo hops, I reversed the car down the lane for about half a mile. I pulled into a field entrance and I parked, leaving him sleeping soundly.
Darkness was fast folding in around me as I jogged back up the lane to Vart and Tori. When I joined them, we stood in that remote Wiltshire lane and looked at each other in silence. The enormity of what we were about to attempt pressed down on us. We looked ridiculous, Vart in red boxer shorts, me in baggy jeans and trainers, and Tori in a check shirt ten sizes too big for her and thick woolly socks. The only weapons we had were a penknife, a tyre lever and a car-jack.
‘You can’t just leave him there. What if it catches fire?’ Tori said still worrying about the driver.
‘It won’t catch fire,’ I assured her. ‘I just rolled it gently in to a farm gate. The farmer will soon find him.’
‘I bet it scratched his paintwork.’
‘Look, I promise if we survive this I’ll buy him a flippin re-spray.’
‘Will you?’
‘Yes.’
‘D’you promise?’
‘Yes, I promise. Scouts’ honour.’
Vart ran a hand through his hair. ‘We’d better get on with it, I suppose.’
‘You’re not in the scouts.’
‘I’ll join the bloody scouts and then I'll promise …’
‘Honest …’
'Yes, honest …'
…………
Time Rocks Page 55