TimeRiders 05 - Gates of Rome (43 page)

‘I guess it’s me, then.’

Rashim squatted down in front of the second translation array marker and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the cuff of his shirt. He was torn between getting this job done quickly,
getting the hell back home to the twenty-first century … and taking the time to breathe in this clean air, to savour that rich blue sky untainted by pollutants. To take a moment and really drink in the sensation of actually existing in history; actually standing on a hilltop in Italy … a mere fifty-four years after the birth of Christ!

He was entirely alone out here. His decision. The less mass to transmit, the higher the safety margin. It was just him and his lab unit. A five-minute errand into ancient history to deploy and test the translation array markers. That’s all.

He kept looking anxiously over his shoulder, for some reason half expecting an entire Roman legion to descend on him at any moment with horns blaring. Silly really, he noted, the clichés one associates with well-branded history.

‘Give me the reference sequence again, will you? I need to check it offsets correctly.’

‘Righto, skippa!’ SpongeBubba said enthusiastically. ‘The sequence is … are you ready, Rashim?’

‘I’m ready. Fire away.’

‘Nine. Zero. Seven. Two. Two. Three.’

Rashim tapped those into the rod’s touch-screen. ‘Go on.’

‘Two. Nine. Seven …’

A pause. He looked at his lab unit. ‘Yeah, I’m waiting … go on.’

‘Uhhh … Rashim?’

‘Yes?’

‘There’s a person coming towards us.’

‘Uh?’ Rashim stood up and saw a young woman in a burgundy-coloured tunic and with a mane of frizzy strawberry-blonde hair striding through the grass towards them. He cursed under his breath. They’d checked this hilltop hundreds of times over for passing density shifts. Apart from signals that might be
the occasional bird, or a passing goat … no one came here. Ever. Until now apparently.

Dammit
.

He’d learned a smattering of Latin – a requirement for all the Exodus candidates. He quickly removed his sunglasses before she got too close, wincing at the brightness of the day. The clothes and his bright-yellow lab unit he couldn’t do anything about. As she drew up in front of him, he offered the young woman his most charming smile.

‘Uh …
Salve
.’ He was pretty sure he’d just mangled up the pronunciation right there.

And then, rather belatedly, he realized she was wearing glasses. ‘Hey,’ she replied with a casual wave. ‘How’s it going … Dr Rashim Anwar?’

Rashim’s jaw swung open and hung there uselessly.

She offered him a hand. ‘Yup, I speak English. And yup, I know precisely who you are. My name’s Maddy by the way … pleased to meet you.’

‘How … how … who …?’

‘I know. You’ve got a lot of questions.’ She smiled. ‘Don’t worry – I know exactly what that’s like.’

He stared at her outstretched hand.

‘I know all about Project Exodus, Dr Anwar. So look, I’ll cut to the chase. I work for some people. We’re … well, you won’t have heard of us, but our job is preventing foolish things like this from happening.’

Rashim’s mouth finally closed. ‘You … you’re from
thatagency
, aren’t you?’

She frowned. ‘
That
agency?’

‘The freelancers! Rumours! Jesus! I’ve heard rumours. Not sure I ever believed them! But –’

‘Rumours?’

‘Yeah … about the agency.
The
agency. They say that billionaire nutcase Waldstein’s involved in some way. Is … is it for real?’

Maddy shrugged. ‘I can’t say exactly who I –’

‘My God, it is! Isn’t it?’ Rashim didn’t know whether to be begging for an autograph from her, or running for his very life. International law on time travel was unforgiving. And very final.

‘Jesus! I thought it was just
us,
you know? Just us with a viable time-translation system!’ He laughed nervously. ‘But how the hell …? I mean we’ve had trillions of defence budget dollars,
trillions
, thrown at this and we’ve only just managed to get the system reliable enough to risk
human
translations!’

She lowered her hand. ‘Look. We really need to talk with you. Project Exodus is going to fail badly, Dr Anwar. I’ve seen the results for myself.’

‘What? You … you’ve
pre-empted
us? You’ve arrived here before now?’

She nodded. ‘You’re going to miss this time-stamp by a mile. It’s going to go badly wrong and you’re all going to die. This project has to stop right here.’

She offered her hand again. ‘Dr Anwar …
Rashim
, I’m not here to arrest you, or hurt you or threaten you. I’m just here to stop this nightmare happening. Can we talk?’

Dr Rashim Anwar looked at the old man, stick-thin arms wrapped round knees that bulged like arthritic knucklebones.

They were sitting together in the shade of the trees. He sipped ice-cold Protein-Plus solution from his cell-powered thermos flask, offered it to the young Indian girl beside him.

‘He …?’ he said, pointing at the old man. ‘He’s
me
?’

Maddy nodded. ‘The Exodus group’s translation overshoots those beacons you were putting out.’

‘But … it shouldn’t. They should anchor the particle signal. They should –’

‘Mass,’ the old Rashim hissed. ‘Mass. We miscalculate … you and me. We get it wrong. Yes!’

The young man shook his head vehemently, his ponytail swinging like a pennant. ‘No, I’ve calculated and recalculated the figures. Run simulation after simulation on the total mass we’re planning to send.’

‘It changes!’

‘Changes?’

‘The translation day is hurried f-forward … candidates
changed
… last-minute panic. It’s a
mess
!’ The old man muttered more, but it was lost in his gurgling throat.

‘Why?’

The old man was muttering a one-sided conversation with
himself. The young scientist leaned forward and grabbed a stick-thin wrist. ‘Tell me! Why is Exodus hurried forward? What happened?’

The old man’s black and brown peg-tooth smile looked revolting. ‘The end … young me!’

Maddy looked at him. ‘Did you say “
the end
”?’

He cackled. A sad, dry laugh. ‘We finally do it … wipe ourselves out.’

‘What?’

‘Kill the planet with drips of poison … then finally kill ourselves. Tidy finish, hmm?’

‘What is it, bombs?’ said Maddy. ‘Is that “the end”? Is that what happens? A nuclear war?’

Rashim rocked gently on his haunches, distracted as he spoke. ‘Oh no! Bombs some of us could survive. But this? No … no-no-no. No one survives this!’

‘What is it?’

The old Rashim grinned. ‘Elley! Elley! Elley!’

‘Who’s
Elley
?’ asked Sal.

‘He means an ELE. An Extinction Level Event,’ replied Rashim. ‘Like the K-T event wiped out the dinosaurs: an asteroid.’ The young man shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised, the way things are. It’s –’

‘Not an asteroid,’ said the old Rashim. He giggled. ‘It is God! Punishing us with a pestilence! Yes!’

‘You mean a virus?’

The old man cocked his head. ‘A pestilence.’

Maddy sipped from the flask and passed it back to the young Rashim. ‘You need to know that your Project Exodus will cause a time wave that will completely rewrite history. You should know there’s no New York, there’s no America in 2001, thanks to you.’

‘It’s all jungle,’ said Sal. ‘Nothing.’

‘Christ! Time contamination is exactly what we
want
to achieve! The future’s a dead end for us! Don’t you see? There’s no way forward for mankind! Only backwards! The goal of Exodus is to export the executive branch of the United States back to Roman times. We’ve got weapons, we’ve got medicines, technology databases, experts in absolutely every field! Soldiers –’

‘Well, whatever you
intended
Exodus to be … it ends up a disaster.’ She nodded at the old man beside her, once again lapsed into distracted muttering to himself. ‘That wreck of a human over there is the sole survivor of Project Exodus. That’s you, Dr Anwar! That how you want to end up?’

‘Then I’ll go back and suggest we reduce the translation mass. We can take less and that’ll reduce the potential error margin!’

‘You’re not going back,’ said Maddy.

‘What?’

‘I can’t let you go. Your people have to think your deployment technique failed. That your translation method is too unreliable to continue any further with.’

Rashim swallowed nervously. ‘Please … I have to get back.’

‘Sorry,’ she replied. ‘This is the way it goes.’ She looked across at Bob and Liam inspecting the display screen of one of the beacon rods and the lab unit looking anxious as if they intended to use the thing as a cricket bat. ‘We’re using your beacons to try and get back to our time. To 2001 … and I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with us.’

Bob finished tapping in the data on the small touch-screen and a light flickered green from the top of the rod. ‘This should now be sending a thread-signal of particles that can be detected by our transmission array.’

‘You shouldn’t be interfering with that!’ complained the lab
unit. ‘It’s not yours!’ SpongeBubba stuck out a petulant lip. ‘Very naughty!’

‘Do you think it will work?’ asked Liam.

Bob shrugged. ‘If the equipment in the archway is still functioning and undamaged and there is enough power remaining to deploy a time window, then there is no reason this should not work.’

‘My skippa will be very angry with you!’ chimed the lab unit.

Liam gave Bob a tired smile. ‘What would we do without you?’

Bob missed the affectionate rhetoric. ‘Grow another unit?’

‘I … I am not going in
there
. I am not going with you!’

Maddy looked at the old man. She’d expected they’d have to get Bob to wrestle the young Rashim through the portal, but not the old one. ‘What? Why?’

He shook his head. ‘Want … want to die right here.’ He nodded slowly. ‘Here … this place. This hilltop. Open space …’ He closed his eyes, sniffed the air as the gentle breeze made the long grass before them and the leaves above them whisper together.

‘Shadd-yah! You don’t have to
die
,’ said Sal. ‘We can get you some help back home! Decent food. Get you looked at by some doctors or something! You’re going to be just fine!’

‘Already dead,’ he rasped. He looked at his younger self. ‘Don’t become
this
…’ he said, touching his own cheek with a claw of a finger. He smiled and closed his eyes. ‘I found you. These people must stop you … stop us.’

‘None of you understand, do you?’ said young Rashim. ‘The world’s pretty much finished in my time. We’ve poisoned everything. The world’s a garbage pit. What’s left that isn’t flooded is … is
landfill
. There’s no hope for us any more!’

‘Whatever mess we made of earth … we can’t toy around with time like this,’ said Maddy. ‘We’re
all
going back and leaving this history as it’s meant to be.’

‘No!’ The old Rashim’s eyes opened. ‘God … He’s in there.’ He nodded towards the strobing beacon that Bob was holding in his fist. ‘In that place … is
chaos
!’

Young Rashim shook his head with mild disgust at the rambling old man. ‘There’s no way that crazy old fool’s me.’

‘…
if I he finds me … me and Mr Muzzy
,’ he gabbled, ‘
… if he finds us in there, we’ll be sent straight to Hell for what we did. Straight to Hell! Straight to Hell …
’

‘Why don’t we let him stay?’ said Liam.

Maddy turned round. ‘What?’

‘Let him stay.’ Liam looked at the old man with pity. ‘Look at him … the poor man’s completely terrified.’

‘We can’t just leave him here! He’ll starve or –’

‘He won’t survive, Maddy. He won’t make it through. Look at him.’

Maddy did. And she could see Liam was probably right. It looked like a strong gust of wind would kill him, let alone being bombarded with cell-rupturing tachyons. ‘All right, then.’ She squatted down beside the old man and put a hand on his arm. His wild rambling stopped.

‘Is this what you want, Rashim?’

He turned to look at her with milky madness in his wet eyes. She wondered if he was even seeing her.

‘Rashim? Can you hear me? Do you want to stay here?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll be on your own? We all have to go.’

He nodded, smiled. ‘Have Mr Muzzy with me.’

Maddy shook her head. It felt wrong leaving him out here. His mind was mush. She wasn’t even sure he knew where he was, even who he was any more.

Then there seemed to be some purpose in his eyes. He smiled. ‘You go. I want this …’

‘What? What is it you want?’

He spread his arms. ‘
This
. Let me have this.’

She looked around at the flat hilltop. The soft hiss through the dry grass, the unbroken blue sky above. A horizon of distant lavender-tipped mountain peaks. And peace.

Peace and almost infinite space.

Maddy got it. She totally got it.

‘All right,’ she whispered softly to him. ‘All right …’ She smiled, squeezed his arm gently. ‘Savour it, Rashim. Savour every moment of it.’

He looked at her with a glimmer of sanity. ‘Thank you.’

She stood up and beckoned the others away, leaving the old man sitting hunched in the middle of the tall grass, his head cocked, listening to the gentle whisper of the wind.

‘Fill up that jug for him. Let’s at least leave him some water.’

‘He’s not coming?’ asked Sal.

‘Nope.’

‘Still nothing?’

The technician shook his head solemnly.

Dr Yatsushita watched the proxy density display on the main holo-screen. It was flatlining. The density equivalent of white noise. Just an interdimensional soup. He took his glasses off and rubbed weary eyes. It was return-time plus over three hours. Even at one minute past due, the implication had been pretty clear. Just as there was no such thing as being ‘slightly pregnant’, there was no such thing as being
nearly successful
with time translation.