Infinity Cage (24 page)

‘I’m not as old as I look,’ replied Maddy. ‘Well, at least I hope I’m not.’

‘Her parents … the virus?’

‘No. We found her on the road outside the FSA, beyond the Median Line.’

‘Jackers got ’em,’ said Heywood.

‘You people came in from the east coast? What was it like out there?’

‘Long story,’ replied Maddy. ‘Suffice to say we’d only just got through immigration … then all this happened.’

‘What about Charley, Dad?’ said Troy. ‘Could she stay here with us?’

Duncan looked at Maddy, his face a question. ‘She’d probably be safer here.’

Rashim turned to her. ‘Maybe she would be better off staying here? Food and water? It’s remote and safe up here.’

‘I guess so.’ She turned to the girl. ‘Charley? Would you like to stay here?’

She expected the young girl to shake her head vigorously at the suggestion. She’d been with them now for several weeks, grown used to them, attached to them. Adopted them as her new family even. Instead she looked undecided.

‘Could … could Becks stay here with me too?’

Maddy glanced at the support unit. Her brows arched and flickered ever so slightly.
My God … she’s not getting all maternal and momsey, is she?

Becks narrowed her eyes for a moment and cocked her head. Thinking. Evaluating for a moment. Then she replied. ‘I cannot stay here with you, Charley.’ There seemed to be just a hint of emotion in her voice. ‘I have a mission to carry out.’

Charley nodded. She knew all about the Big Mission. ‘To meet with the walrus man and save the world?’

Becks smiled. ‘That is correct.’ She reached across and gently held one of her hands. ‘You will be safe here with these people. They appear to be non-threatening.’

‘Where are you from, Becks?’ asked Duncan. ‘There’s an accent in there somewhere.’

‘I am … from England.’

‘British? Wow. Not ever met a Brit. How much of that island of yours is there left?’

‘Above the water?’ She cocked her head. ‘Very little.’

Charley grasped her hand. ‘Will you come back here when you’re all finished?’

Maddy stepped in quickly. ‘Yes. We’ll come back when we’re all done, won’t we, Becks?’

Maddy could see Becks was struggling with telling a direct untruth. ‘Yes. We … will … come back.’

Maddy looked at Duncan. ‘If you’re sure that’s OK with you?’

He nodded. She could see in his eyes he knew they were lying, that they were unlikely to ever be coming back this way. ‘Sure.’ He turned to Charley. ‘Me and Troy will look after you until they come back.’

Charley considered that for a moment, then nodded in a slow and deliberate way that suggested she’d figured out what was going on here; that she was a liability being passed from one pair of hands to another. But she managed a smile for them all. ‘Good … I’d like to stay here for a bit, if that’s OK?’

Troy clapped her hands together happily. ‘We’ll be like sisters! If you want?’

Charley smiled and nodded. ‘I used to have a big sister … once. She used to listen to old music on a
pod
. She called it rock … I don’t know why.’

‘I’ve got a bunch of old-time music on my tablet. Do you want to hear some?’

With that, the girls began swiping at the glowing display, and chattering about songs and music and bands from the ‘olden days’.

Maddy noticed the first hint of a smile on Duncan’s face. ‘I don’t think she’s even begun to accept it’s just going to be the
two of us … from now on,’ he said softly. ‘It’ll be good for her … to have Charley stay with us.’

‘Good.’

Duncan nodded. ‘Trust me,’ he said quietly, ‘she’ll be fine here. We’ll take good care of her.’

The next morning Duncan showed them a small two-wheel trailer that he’d found in a maintenance shed. The tyres were still good. With Becks’s help, he loaded it up with a dozen two-litre bottles of water, some of the packets of dried soy-flakes he’d brought with him and several dozen tins of the canned food that had been collecting dust up here in the Blue Valley Camp for God-knows-how-many decades. The labels on most of the tins had perished and Duncan said it would be a lucky dip each time they opened a can. He also pulled out of a storage cupboard half a dozen padded nylon hiking jackets.

‘It’s going to get colder if you’re heading any further into the Rockies. You’ll need these from here on.’

All their things stowed on the trailer, Becks and Heywood pulled it across the lumpy ground towards the rutted gravel driveway leading out of the camp. The rest of them followed and beneath the faded welcome sign they came to a halt, bid farewell and wished each other good luck.

Duncan stepped away from the others and offered his hand to Maddy. ‘I hope you find your folks alive. But look … don’t build your hopes too high. Whatever you find down south, well … just … don’t let it get to you. Chances aren’t good.’

‘I know. But I have to just go see for myself.’

‘We’ve all lost someone … but we’ve managed to survive. This is a new world now. Day Zero. For all we know there might only be a few thousand people left alive. Do what you have to do … and I wish you luck.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And if you can … do try to make it back here.’ He looked around the camp. ‘This is as good a place as any to try to rebuild something.’

‘We’ll certainly try.’

The others finished saying goodbye to Troy and Duncan. Then it was Charley’s turn. She wrapped her arms round each of them, one after the other, hugging them fiercely. Finally, she came to Becks. The support unit stooped down and folded her arms round the girl. The others stepped away and discussed directions and the weather, giving them both a moment of privacy.

‘Thank you for looking after me, Becks,’ Charley whispered into her ear.

Becks smiled over her shoulder. ‘You are welcome, Charley.’

Charley released her tight hold, pulled back and looked at Becks. ‘Please be very careful.’

‘I will.’

She bit her lip. Wondering whether to say something or not. She couldn’t help herself. ‘I know … I know something about you.’

Becks cocked her head, curious. ‘What do you know about me?’

‘That you’re not completely human. I heard Mr Heywood say something about it.’

Becks’s eyes narrowed. She frowned. ‘What did he say?’

‘You’re, like, a
fake
human? Like one of those super-soldiers in the army?’

‘Yes … I am a “fake human”.’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter … not really. You’re no different to
real
people anyway.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’ She planted a kiss on Becks’s cheek. ‘And you’ve been kinder to me than most other people I met.’

Becks’s frown deepened as she let her software try to make some sense out of that. She put this memory, this moment, into a brand-new folder to be picked over later.

‘Don’t be so sad,’ said Charley. ‘I’ll be OK here.’

‘Hey, Becks!’ called Heywood. He tilted his head towards the road heading out of the camp. ‘We’re runnin’ out of small talk here.’

Becks released her tight hold of the girl and stood up. ‘I will be OK also.’

‘Right, folks, reckon we should go!’ said Heywood. ‘We got a full day an’ a lot more uphill to deal with!’

‘He’s right.’ Maddy nodded. ‘Thanks again … for the food and water and the trailer.’

‘Good luck,’ replied Duncan. ‘And remember. We’re here. OK?’

They turned and headed out beneath the faded sign, out of the camp and along the gravel road. Becks walked silently beside Heywood, the tow bar of the trailer gripped in her tight fists. She was busy processing her thoughts.

Sad?
Charley had said ‘Don’t be so sad’ to her. She wondered what had made the girl say that. She hadn’t opened her ‘emotion folder’ for any useful gestures or expressions to play on her face. There’d just been her usual intense scowl of concentration. She felt something tickling the skin of her right cheek. Certainly it wasn’t going to be a bug. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, left alive. She wiped her cheek and felt moisture. She
pulled her hand away and looked at the glistening droplet on the tip of her finger.

A tear.

Her very first tear.

Rashim studied the row of satnav coordinates on the small glowing display of his wrist-pad. It lit his face up brightly, the screen reflected in his eyes as he read the data. ‘Eight miles south-west of us.’ He touched the side of the pad and turned it off. ‘The hydro-cell charge is down to fifteen per cent. I should keep it mostly switched off now to preserve what is left.’

‘Yeah, makes sense.’ Maddy snuggled down in her sleeping bag, turned over on to her left side and gazed at the glowing embers of the campfire. She could hear Heywood’s deep mucus-thick snoring, and out there, just beyond the faintest flickering light cast from the dying campfire, she could hear Becks. The support unit was busy standing guard in that half-awake/half-standby mode she adopted every night. Every now and then stirring, shifting weight, taking a pace or two, then once more utterly motionless, frozen like a watchful terracotta warrior.

She felt surprisingly snug in her sleeping bag despite the cloud of vapour she was breathing out in front of her cold face. And she was feeling well fed; the soy-flake stew they’d boiled up again had been unexpectedly satisfying and filling. Warm and full now … normally she’d have been the first to fall asleep, especially after all this hiking, after all this high-altitude air. But for some reason she felt wide awake. Above her she could see the stars perfectly clearly. The night sky here in 2070 looked no different from any other time. It was only the days that looked jaundiced and sickly.

‘Rashim? You still awake?’

‘No, I’m fast asleep.’

‘Oh, ha ha.’ She wriggled around in her bag for a moment. There was a root or a stone digging into her hip. ‘So, just wondered … it must be kinda weird coming back to 2070. Did it feel like coming home for you?’

No quickly tossed-back answer from him. She guessed he was thinking about it.

‘Not really,’ he replied finally. ‘It all feels so long ago now. How long has it been do you think … since you first
abducted
me?’

‘Abducted? Rescued, more like.’

‘No. I was right first time
. Abducted
.’ She heard him laugh. He was kidding.

‘How long? You mean in
us
time … in
TimeRiders
time?’

She heard him chuckle again. ‘Yeah, TimeRiders time.’

‘Jeez, dunno.’ She tried to add it up in her head. They’d first encountered Rashim setting up those receiver beacons on that remote hillside a dozen miles outside Rome in
AD
54. They’d taken him back to New York with them because, well, back then she hadn’t any idea what else to do with him. He knew too much. Then they’d found themselves on the run, having to relocate to Victorian London and set up their displacement machine. And how long had they been there? They’d been living beneath the Holborn Viaduct for about three months before she’d come up with that stupid idea to go back to 1666 to watch the Great Fire of London. Not one of her best. After she and Sal had managed to rescue Liam and Rashim, there’d been the whole unlocking-Becks’s-partitioned-mind plan. Which, of course, had eventually led them deep into the jungles of Nicaragua and that lost city in those mountains. That had been another few months of humidity, heat, mosquito bites … and horror. Her mind played a few fleeting moments of
that night
. The night that
Sal had returned from chaos space as something corrupted, powerful, terrifying.

The night that Adam had died.

Adam … the one person she’d met in all this time that she could imagine herself sharing a life with, a life after this endless exercise in fighting fires … this mystery … this nightmare … was finally resolved. Back there in the jungle she’d stupidly allowed herself to imagine what it would be like to share the rest of her life with him, to have children with him if it was even possible, to grow old with him. She’d imagined the fanciful tales of time travel they could have told their sniggering, disbelieving grandchildren. ‘
You reeeeally met a Roman centurion, Grandma? You really were mentioned in the Holy Grail, Grandad? Yeah … right.
’

She smiled in the dark. What a lovely could-have-been that would have been.

And, after all that, they’d returned home to Victorian London. There’d been that long holiday abroad to India, the Far East and to Africa. She’d needed that. Time away from their dark, depressing dungeon. Time spent not dwelling on the end of the world. She suspected both Liam and Rashim had conspired to keep her as busy as possible, to show her there was an exciting and colourful world out there beyond the suffocating confines of their bubble existence.

‘Maddy? You asleep?’

‘Sorry, I zoned out for a while there.’ She silently totalled up all the months in her head as best she could. ‘About two years or so at a wild guess.’

‘Two years? Is that all? It feels so much longer.’

It sure does
. They’d been through so much together.

‘You know … it
was
very strange going back to my single-unit in Denver.’

‘I never asked you, Rashim … in all that time, I never asked
whether you had someone close to you in this time? A wife? A girlfriend? Family?’

‘I had no wife or girlfriend. Not while I was working on Project Exodus.’

‘What about before?’

‘Yes. Of course. One or two relationships.’

‘Serious ones?’

He was silent for a while. ‘No. Nothing serious. I like to keep my life as uncomplicated as possible.’

‘What about any family?’

‘I have two sisters and my mother. They live in New London right now.’ He corrected himself. ‘Well, that is … they
lived
in New London.’

‘I’m sorry, Rashim. God, I’ve been so wrapped up in Waldstein and gazing at my own navel, it didn’t occur to me you might have had someone you cared for in this time. You must have been worrying about them these last few months, you know, with K-N and stuff?’

‘A little perhaps. But I haven’t seen them for years. We were not that close.’

‘Two sisters? So, were they older? Younger?’

‘Older. I was the spoiled baby of our family. The one my mother doted on.’

She shook her head. All this time, and she’d never thought to ask him questions like these. Never even bothered to enquire about his life before they’d met. ‘I’m sorry … we’ve never really talked much about your life before you got stuck in the past with us.’

‘Don’t worry, Maddy.’ She heard his sleeping bag rustle. ‘It seems we have always been kept busy with one thing after another.’

‘You can say that again.’

They were silent for a while. She listened to the only sounds
of the mountain forest: the creak of dead wood, the rustling of a gentle breeze carrying dust and grit across sterile ground.

‘Maddy?’

‘Yes?’

‘If Waldstein presents us with a reason, a
compelling
reason … which gives us no choice but to accept leaving this world as it is now …?’

‘You want to know what we’re gonna do next?’

‘Yes,’ he replied.

‘Damned if I know.’

She wondered about that. If – and it was a big if – they even found him alive, what would he tell them? What could possibly justify this being allowed to happen? A fate worse than this?

Jesus … it’s got to be a frikkin’ horrifying alternative, if mankind almost completely annihilating itself is the
better
choice of the two!

But, if whatever he revealed to them actually made sense and this was how things needed to be left, then Rashim was right – what next?

Does Waldstein have plans for us? Or will he just pat us on the head and let us go?

She wondered if he’d have a functional displacement machine. He must do. In which case, she wondered if he’d grant them one last wish to go wherever, whenever, they wanted. Grant them a happy-ever-after ending.

‘Maybe he’ll let us choose a time we could go back to … let us pick some place to live out the rest of our lives?’

‘That would be nice,’ replied Rashim.

‘Yeah, it would. I’d say we’ve frikkin’ well earned something like that.’

She heard him shuffling in his sleeping bag again. ‘If he did let us go wherever we wanted to, where would you choose to go, Maddy?’

‘I don’t know. The first time I ever went back in time, it was to San Francisco in 1906. The beginning of the twentieth century … it was so cool. I loved the clothes, the buzz of activity, the sense of great things lying ahead.’

‘Like two world wars?’

‘Uh? Yeah, OK. Those were pretty bad. But, like, there’s the rest of the twentieth century? How cool would that be? To see all of that? The roaring twenties? The decades
after
the Second World War: the fifties, the sixties, the seventies?’

How about one particular decade? The nineties?
If Waldstein gave her a golden one-way ticket back, she could see herself choosing 1994. She might just go to a city called Norwich in England and look up a scruffy young British college student with a ponytail and a scrappy beard.

‘Rashim, what about you?’

‘I think I would like to go back to the 1700s.’

She laughed. ‘Back to being the notorious Blackbeard, pillaging and looting your way across the high seas?’

‘That must sound wrong, the pillaging, the looting … but yes, I enjoyed being Captain Anwar. I enjoyed the freedom, the adventure. Liam and I made very good pirates.’

‘You boys really enjoyed yourselves back then, didn’t you?’

She could hear the wistful smile in the tone of his voice. ‘It was fun, yes. I do sometimes wonder how things might have been; how many ships we would have amassed in our fleet eventually. How famous, or
infamous
, we would have become.’