The mayan prophecy (Timeriders # 8) (32 page)

The portal shimmered before them. An eight-foot-wide orb that revealed the faint undulating, reassuring blue glow of computer screens and a flickering light bulb dangling on a flex from a low brick ceiling.

‘About time!’ Liam blew a sigh of relief. ‘I was beginning to think that transponder of yours was broken,’ he said to Rashim.

Rashim smiled. ‘For a minute there, so was I.’

Liam reached out for Maddy and helped her to her feet. ‘Come on, Mads, we’re going home now.’

She nodded. Clasped his shoulder, then hugged him. ‘It’s just you and me now,’ she whispered into his neck.

‘Aye,’ he replied softly. He knew what she was saying. They were leaving Sal behind, or what was left of her. She was gone. Gone for good. Leaving Adam behind too. Departing felt like an act of betrayal, abandonment. Cowardice.

‘Aye, I know.’ He sighed. ‘But we still got each other.’

Just then they heard Bertie’s voice echoing from the rear of the cave. And an unintelligible, high-pitched and lady-like scream.

Bob and Becks turned towards the sound. Both of them stepped into the gloom and stood side by side, a closed wall protecting the others.

‘Caution!’ barked Becks. ‘I am detecting an energy surge approaching us. Twenty yards away.’

Bob looked back at them. ‘You should leave. Now!’

They heard the clack and scrape of boot heels, then Bertie emerged out of the darkness, wide rolling eyes, his ashen face glistening with sweat. ‘It’s heeere!’ he screamed. ‘It’s right behind me!’

He pushed his way past the support units.

‘Go! Go through!’ Liam yelled. He grabbed Bertie’s arm and roughly shoved him towards the portal. Bertie tossed aside any reservations he’d had about stepping back into chaos space and leaped headfirst into the floating orb.

‘You too,’ Liam said to Maddy.

She shook her head and took him in her arms again. ‘Not without you.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not staying!’

‘Fifteen yards and closing!’ called out Becks.

‘Go!’ Liam stepped out of Maddy’s embrace. ‘Go! I’ll be right behind you!’

She disappeared into the portal, her eyes staying locked on his until she vanished from view. Rashim followed her a second later.

Just then the sun finally breached the distant horizon, and the blood-red light of dawn flooded into the deepest recesses of the cave.

‘Liam!’ said Bob. ‘You must leave now!’

He was standing right beside the portal. One small jump and he’d be through it. ‘I’m not leaving without the pair of you.’

‘We will protect you,’ said Becks.

‘Oh Jay-zus, stuff that! Just get back here and go through!’

The support units seemed to weigh that up for a second, then backed up towards the portal. The light of the sun reached
further into the depths of the cave and Liam caught a glimpse of something moving slowly among the shifting shadows.

He slapped Bob’s shoulder. ‘Go!’

Bob scowled. ‘I will protect –’

‘I’m right here, right next to it!’ He nodded at the portal. ‘I’ll be through straight after you two! Now for the love of God … GO! That’s an order!’

Bob nodded and stepped through.

Becks looked at Liam sternly. ‘Do not delay unnecessarily.’ Then she too stepped into the shimmering displacement field.

Liam planted his feet, ready to leap into the sphere, but something caused him to pause. Perhaps it was curiosity. He’d heard Rashim’s and Bertie’s descriptions of the manifestation the seeker had assumed in the temple hall: Sal’s head on the end of a long snake-like neck. A head that had turned into a skull.

He couldn’t bring himself to believe that. They must have been mistaken – perhaps it was a face similar to hers. Maybe the seeker was simply copying faces it had seen.

He couldn’t believe that this thing was actually her, or even partially her. And if it really was … maybe he might be able to get through to her.

Then he saw her. Sal, in the flesh, the crimson light of the rising sun picking her head and one bare shoulder out of the dark.

‘Hello, Liam,’ she said. A casual greeting. Just as if she’d wandered into their Brooklyn archway with a basket of laundry under one arm.

He tried to offer her a smile to hide the fact he was trembling. ‘Hey, Sal.’ His voice warbled uncontrollably. ‘How’re you doing there?’

She cocked her head. Her dark fringe flopped down over one eye. ‘It’s been a long while. I almost forgot what you looked like.’

‘You’ve only been gone days, Sal.’

She laughed. The sound was a dry rattle, little more than a bitter sneer. The one eye he could see rolled up until only the white of it was visible. She closed her eyes. ‘Far longer than a few days, Liam. Far longer.’

She remained silent for a few moments, remained standing in the darkness. The sun continued to rise, its warming rays reaching back into the gloom and causing the shadows to chase each other in slow motion across craggy rock surfaces.

‘I’m dying, Liam,’ she whispered. ‘As I stand here … I’m slowly dying.’

Energy.
He realized her energy was draining away with every second she existed outside of chaos space.

‘I know.’ He turned to look at the portal. The others would be anxiously waiting for him. ‘Is that what you want, Sal? To die?’

Her eyes still closed, she frowned. Her lips twitched, emotions chasing each other across her face like the shadows behind her.

‘I wish I could help you,’ he said, his voice catching. ‘Why did you do it? Why did you step in?’

‘I … I don’t remember. So long ago now.’

Her body was gone. She was just energy. A ghost. What was once Sal for real was gone. What stood before him was an echo of her, a facsimile constructed from energy.

‘Sal?’

‘Yes … Liam?’

‘You know, you have a choice.’

‘Choice.’ Her eyes opened. All-white. An unsettling sight. He realized it wasn’t that her eyes were still rolled upwards, but instead the pupils had become a frosted, opaque, milky colour.

‘You don’t have to be stuck in chaos space forevermore.’

She cocked her head again, smiled. ‘If I stand here? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘If you stay right there –’ Liam nodded – ‘you’ll fade away to nothing. You’ll be at peace.’

She nodded. That seemed to be a comforting prospect.

‘Is that what you want, Sal?’ He took a tentative step forward. ‘If you’d like, I could stay with you … until the very end.’

For a moment she considered that. A fleeting smile played across her lips as she imagined the possibility; an end to the sadness, an end to the torment. But the voices of others in her head cried out angrily that their say in the matter was just as valid as hers.

To be outside of the torment of chaos space was a blessed relief to them all. To be standing on firm ground, to be in a space of three comprehensible dimensions was a joy. To touch, to feel the flesh of real living beings was an addictive sensation.

But to remain outside indefinitely, like this – and not return to replenish their strength? Only one trapped soul in this colony of diminished form was ready to end its existence like that.

‘Sal?’ said Liam softly. ‘Is that what you want? Do you want to go?’

She felt the control that she’d exercised over the others begin to slip. She felt her mind fading away, her internal voice becoming lost in the cacophony of voices screaming inside her.

‘Sal? Is that what you want?’

Yes … Liam … that’s what I want
 …

But her reply was a whisper. A chorus of voices shouted it down. An angry chorus that wanted to rip this living thing to pieces. To feel the texture of its flesh, its bones, its blood. To feel it singe, crisp and curl like cooked meat. Then … then, to step into the glow of that shimmering orb behind. They could feel the energy emanating from it, like the warmth of a campfire on a cold night.

Needed, so
needed
that energy. But before that … one last taste of something alive.

‘
We
want
you
 …’

The slight shape of the girl phased out of view and became an amorphous cloud of energy. Liam realized the rippling air in front of him was now no longer his friend. Whatever part of Sal had been standing there was now gone, swallowed up inside this malevolent form. It began to move, slowly gliding towards him.

One touch of it, one gentle brush against it and he was dead.

‘Oh, bugger this,’ he whispered.

He turned round and leaped for the portal.

Liam landed heavily on the brick floor of the dungeon, a drop of several feet that knocked the air flat out of his lungs.

Maddy and Rashim were anxiously waiting for him right beside the portal. ‘Oh, thank God!’ cried Maddy. She swiped at her cheeks with the heel of her hand as she dropped down to her knees and reached out towards Liam, to get a hold of him. To be sure he was the real thing and not some apparition.

‘God! I thought I’d lost you as well –’

Liam managed to get some air in his lungs. ‘CLOSE THE PORTAL!’ he screamed. ‘CLOSE IT NOW!’

All eyes in the dungeon rose to look at the liquid image of the sphere hovering above Liam. The orb revealed the pleasant crimson tint of sunrise warming ridges of weather-worn rust-coloured sandstone. The dark outline of a distant jungle horizon; pools of mist coloured candyfloss pink by the rays of sunlight; creamy combed-out clouds in the sky above, lit from beneath.

Amid this swirling scene of beautiful serenity, something suddenly moved into view. A dark and indefinable form: like a
murder of crows fluttering far too closely together and merging into one; like a school of fish constantly changing form as they evade the jaws of a circling predator.

The dark shape quickly filled the spherical image and for a moment it seemed like it might emerge from the orb and step out into the dungeon among them, but then the portal suddenly collapsed down to a pinprick of light and vanished.

In the dim electric-blue glow of the array of computer screens across the room, and the unblinking glare of the solitary bulb in its wire cage dangling from the low ceiling, they silently stared at each other. Ragged breathing filling the space between them; no words were necessary, and anyway, right then, none would have sufficed in helping them make any sense of what they’d just been through and all that they’d witnessed.

All the same, the silence was eventually broken.

‘I think I might just go now,’ said Bertie. He nodded politely at the others as if he was excusing himself from a rather uneventful game of cribbage. He turned and walked across the room, ducking as he stepped through the low archway. He looked back at them and offered another polite nod, before walking out of the dungeon and gently pulling the oak door shut behind him.

I will admit I never cast eyes on those people again. Every night after our return to London – for weeks, perhaps even for months afterwards – I recall I was awoken with the most dreadful night frights.

Awoken by my own screams.

So it was that I avoided them. I admit I even had trouble entering the premises of Delbert Hook’s business for the knowledge that only several brick walls separated me from their device that opened a doorway on to Hell itself. I became haunted by imagined visions of that demon stalking the dark corridors and archways of the viaduct.

I recall that I managed to last but a few days before I finally left a note for Delbert informing him that I would be seeking employment elsewhere, with immediate effect. I do believe now that that was the only course of action I could take.

Over the intervening years I have often wondered if those young ladies and gentlemen ever truly existed, and what became of them. Whether they remained as subtenants of Mr Hook and his so-called import/export business. Or whether they eventually found other premises more suitable to their goals and plans.

I moved from Holborn to Kilburn in London, where I took up a teaching post at Henley House. Although I think I made the move more
to distance myself from those haunting memories, to distance myself from their Hellish device. And I recall for many months after leaving Holborn I hungrily scoured the morning newspapers for fear of reading a ghastly report of giant three-legged monsters emerging from beneath the ground to burn us all to ashes.

With every year that has passed, I have managed to convince myself better that those memories were the product of an excitable young mind, an imagination run wild with no outlet of expression for it. Thus, I do believe my writing of works of fiction in later years has helped me in this respect.

Helped me to accept that in all likelihood those things never in fact happened to me.

That they were perhaps the side effects of a fever, most probably caused by food poisoning. A hallucination that lasted a few days. Or a particularly vivid dream that has stayed with me.

I believe I have finally managed to convince myself that none of those things were real. That they were imagined and that I am safe. That this – fortunately – is a very mundane world. That there are no such things as machines that travel through time or open doorways on to Hell. That there are no demons and monsters waiting patiently for such doors to open. That maybe, after all, mankind’s future will not be as dire and dark and war-torn as the girl (what was her name, now? Maggie?) described it to be.

Such notions now seem to me to be too ridiculous and far-fetched for truth.

They have, however, proven to be particularly profitable to me, treated as ideas I have used for my fiction.

The trip away from the smoke and fog of London down the line to Brighton for a few days turned out to be one of Liam’s better ideas.

Maddy’s mood was lifted by the sight of so many fine dresses and elaborate
chapeaux
, by the warmth of the unfolding spring bringing summer unseasonably early. Her spirits were raised by the sight of families playing bat-and-ball games together on the wide beach, by the jaunty sound of brass bands competing with each other for applause from the bandstands along the promenade.

Warm evenings filled with tea and cupcakes and the soothing draw and hiss of a gentle sea across sand and shingle. He noticed every now and then that her gaze was off somewhere far away, wistful, seeing other possibilities, other could-have-beens. But when he spoke to her she came back to him with a quick smile accompanied, he now noticed, by the first faint hairlines of crow’s feet beside her green eyes.

We’re both ageing.

The attrition of so much time travelling, of so much exposure to that misty hell, was finally making itself apparent. Even though he knew they’d both been engineered to have a greater resistance to the corrosive effects of stepping through time, it was, inevitably, going to catch up with them. Eventually. And
as he studied her now – as she stared at seagulls swooping and bullying a hapless child throwing out breadcrumbs – he also saw the faint lines of silver in her hair and a purse line on her upper lip, subtle indicators of what she might one day look like.

Not old. Not even close just yet … but the signposts were all there.

Rashim too was showing the signs of this attrition. Liam had noticed the heavy folds in his brow, the grey highlights in his beard, a subtly mottled tone to his dark skin. He most certainly looked ten years older now than the man they’d first encountered in a remote field outside Ancient Rome.

And Bob and Becks? Liam smiled as he regarded them. They sat stiffly at the tea table, both slurping a lamb broth from soup spoons. They of course never seemed to change. At some point tachyon damage would surely reach too high a level for their cells to repair. At some point they too would start to age. However, he suspected that he, Maddy and Rashim would be long gone before either support unit began to grumble about aching hips or creaking knees.

He knew Maddy was still quietly grieving for Adam. He hadn’t realized until now how strongly she’d felt for him. That it was, quite possibly … 
love
. Or maybe he’d just been some kind of a lifeline: a last chance for her to feel like a normal girl. She’d told him the other day how Adam had pulled her away from the seeker and offered himself up as bait at the last moment. And how she’d only just now figured out what he’d meant with his last words to her. She said Adam must have worked out that he was going to die in 2001. He was going to die
anyway
, whatever happened. Either now or be one of the victims who died in the World Trade Center – he wasn’t going to be in the world for much longer.

She’d told him she reckoned Adam had decided he might as well die for something. To save her.

‘I’m not done with this,’ said Maddy presently. Her eyes returned from the child, now backing nervously away from the gulls massing at her feet. ‘I’ve been thinking about things.’

‘About what?’ asked Rashim.

‘That column field.’

She was quiet for a while. Thoughtful. Fiddling with a coil of her hair, wrapped round a finger. ‘What if, as you suggested back at that city, Rashim, the column was some sort of a marker? An end date for mankind?’

‘A marker?’

‘Like one of your tachyon beacons. But, you know, on a much, much grander scale.’

‘Indeed.’ He stroked his beard thoughtfully. ‘It is highly conceivable that it had that function.’

‘And you suggested that perhaps … this is all, like, some big
experiment
?’

‘Experiment?’ Liam finished his tea and set the cup back down on its saucer. ‘You’re actually taking his idea seriously?’

She nodded.

‘You are in a strange mood this afternoon, Maddy.’

‘No, listen to me … what if he’s right? What if that’s all we’ve ever been. Us humans? An experiment? A grand experiment? And experiments have a cut-off point. Right? When you’ve gathered enough data, you close the whole thing down.’

Rashim shifted in his seat. ‘It was just an idle theory, Maddy. Just a –’

‘What if you’re right and all of Earth and the last – I dunno – the last, say, two thousand years of history have been like a giant Petri dish?’ She looked at him. ‘And us humans are like the bacteria sitting in it, being studied?’

Rashim returned her gaze over the rim of his glasses.

Maddy continued. ‘Rashim, didn’t you say that there was something really odd about why we never,
ever
, intercepted a single radio signal from aliens, even all the way up to 2070? Despite all our powerful radio telescopes and stuff, combing the frequencies, searching the skies for decades. Do you remember saying that?’

‘The Fermi Paradox,’ he uttered. ‘Yes.’

‘And you agree that the math is stacked against us being the only intelligence in the universe? That it’s highly improbable that we are alone here?’

‘Yes, of course, that would be the Drake Equation you are talking about.’

‘You also agree that, in theory, at any given moment in time, given the infinite size of the universe there should be
thousands
of intelligent –’

‘
Tens
of thousands.’

She looked at him. ‘And yet in over seventy years of radio astronomy we pick up not even one single, solitary, radio signal?’

‘And therein lies the Fermi Paradox, yes.’

She carefully unwound the coil of hair from her finger and looked at him. ‘So, I know you were only theorizing, but maybe you’ve got it exactly right. We’re in some kind of “quarantine”. Some isolated dimension?’ She glanced at Liam. ‘Maybe his Petri dish theory isn’t so stupid-sounding?’

‘What are you gettin’ at there, Mads? I’m not sure I –’

‘So, my point is this … what if Waldstein knows something more? What if somehow he knows what’s going on? What if he really is trying to do the
right
thing?’

‘The right thing?’

‘For us. For everyone!’ She shrugged. ‘I dunno … I guess what I’m saying is that maybe if we steer history the way he wants it to go – to the
place
he wants it to end up, to the day
where humans nearly wipe themselves out with that Kosong-ni virus …’ She looked up at her two friends. ‘Maybe that’s the only way we get out of this Petri dish? Maybe it’s the end condition of this “experiment”?’

‘You think it might be just like Adam thought?’ said Liam, instantly regretting his words. He noticed the slightest stiffening of her lips. He knew the mention of his name was a painful jab for her. And it probably would be for a long while yet. He blundered on, keen to quickly move on from the mention of Adam’s name. ‘That those visitors in the jungle, the Archaeologists, came from the far-future? From beyond 2070?’

She nodded. ‘But they’re not observing us discreetly, like anthropologists. No, they’ve taken us and put us into this – this isolated pocket of space, just like we’re all a bunch of lab rats.’

It sounded ridiculous to her and she decided to let it go. ‘It’s the only explanation I can think of.’ She shrugged. ‘Or maybe I’m just losing it.’

‘No,’ Rashim was nodding slowly. ‘Who knows how advanced humans become in the far-future.’

Maddy also nodded thoughtfully. ‘So maybe all of our answers lie in the far-future – lie beyond the year 2070?’

Liam met her eyes; they both shared the slightest smile. ‘Aye. You thinking what I’m thinking, Mads?’

She turned and looked back out over the low promenade wall at the sea gently lapping across the broad beach, at distant scudding clouds in a warm and clement evening sky, at seagulls dipping and swooping, hovering on the breeze like untethered kites.

‘Yeah … maybe …’