options should Liam and Bob fail. Not many options, if truth betold. The choices available to them boiled down to just one, really.
When they’d both be ready to admit that all was lost.
She’d not been foolish enough to let herself think this was actually going to work.That some foggily remembered date from an autobiography that should never have been writtenwould lead Liam and Bob right to the cause of all this? No.
That was the kind of unlikely happy ending that belonged on some cheesy TV show or somerubbish FX-laden blockbuster movie, the nick-of-time last-minute reprieve for the Good Guysthat you
Maddy’s face was buried in the pillow when the ceiling lights in thefield office winked silently on. Half asleep, it wasn’t until her ears registered thesoft hum of the machinery that maintained the time bubble quietly initializing itself that shestirred and turned her face to one side.
It took another long moment for her to realize the power had come back on. That the archwaywas bathed in a flickering clinical light.
She sat up quickly on her cot, almost banging her head against the rough springs of the bunkabove. And smiled.
‘Foster!’
She reached across and shook his shoulder. ‘Foster!’
His rustling breath caught and with a moan of painful discomfort he roused and opened dark,sallow eyes. ‘Whuh… what is it, Madelaine?’
She pointed up at the bulb in the wire cage above them, glowing brightly. ‘Foster, Ithink they did it.’
Several minutes later they were standing outside in their rubbish-strewn backstreet savouringthe return of a familiar world. A lovely sunny day in September, the rumble of traffic overthe Williamsburg Bridge above them, the honk of impatient horns, the distant wail of a policesiren.
Life. Impatient life.
‘I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,’ cried Maddy, her cheeksunashamedly wet.
‘Nor I,’ replied Foster.
She stretched an arm round his sloped shoulders and planted a kiss on a cheek as dry andwrinkled as parchment.
‘We made it,’ she whispered.
Foster smiled. ‘Then let’s bring them back home, shall we?’
?
The lights in the archway flickered momentarily as a result ofthe drain of power. The hum of the displacement machinery rose in pitch and then, all of asudden, there it was. Maddy could see the shimmering outline of the window in the middle ofthe floor, appearing in exactly the same place it had when they’d sent both of them backto 1941.
Within the window she could see a faint rippling image, like a reflection in a disturbed poolof water — it looked to her like a world of trees and snow. Then into view the waveringsilhouette of something dark merged into the puddle-like image. Unmistakably a human figure.Someone coming to them.
A moment later… Liam stepped alone on to the floor of the arch.
‘Liam!’ screamed Maddy with initial delight. Then she saw that his hands and armswere slick with wet and drying blood, his uniform, his neck, his face, pale like a ghost, werespattered with dark droplets.
‘Oh my God… what happened? Liam, are you OK?’
He turned to look at her, his mouth struggling to reply, searching for words.
Foster stepped forward. ‘Liam, lad… are you all right?’
He looked at the old man, frowning, struggling to take things in, blinking back thebrightness from the strip lights above him. Finally he nodded as he opened the palm of onehand and held out something metallic. It was the size of a small mobile phone and coated withclots of drying blood.
‘I… managed to…’ He took a breath and tried again. ‘Well,anyway… Here’s Bob.’
Foster reached for the object, taking it from him gently. ‘You did well, Liam,’he replied softly, knowing full well the grisly deed that Liam had just carried out.‘That’s no easy thing to do. Come sit down, lad,’ headded, leading him over to the table and chairs.
‘Did… did we do it?’ Liam asked.
Maddy grinned and hugged him tightly in answer to his question.
‘Yes, Liam,’ replied Foster, ‘you did it.’
CHAPTER 91
2001, New York
A couple of hours later, after Liam had given a more detailed account of his timein the past, he was fast asleep on one of the cots. His snoring seemed to reverberate throughthe arch even more noisily than the generator had.
Foster worked over at the computer desk. Having scrubbed Bob’s neural processor cleanof brain tissue and blood, he connected it up to the computer system and began downloading theentire content of its hard drive.
‘Bob’s AI is in there amongst that,’ he said, nodding towards the loadingbar slowly creeping across the screen.
‘That’s a lot of data uploading there,’ said Maddy.
‘Well, he was away for nearly six months; all the time, his eyes and ears recordingeverything that was going on.’
‘So, what’s the deal with Bob? Is his AI intact?’
Foster shrugged. ‘I’m no computer expert. So I don’t know how it works. Butthe code that makes up Bob’s AI will merge with the computer system’s.’ Hetapped the keyboard. ‘You’ll be able to communicate with him in there.’
‘Right. Six months of learning… I guess that AI code’s a lot smarter thanthe idiot that plopped out of the birthing tube.’
Foster chuckled. ‘Oh yes.’
She looked at him. ‘How are we going to grow ourselves anothersupport unit? Those tubes are smashed, the gunk they were growing in has all gone off-’
He raised a hand. ‘There’s going to be a lot of work to do to get this fieldoffice online again.’
‘I’ll help you with that… You look tired.’ If she was being honest,she would have said he looked ready to keel over and die.
‘New clone embryos and growing solution. The generator needs replacing. The walls fixedup. You need to replenish our supplies,’ he added.
‘A new generator. That’s going to cost money.’
‘Fine,’ said Foster, ‘just go find a hardware store and buyanother.’
‘We’ve got enough money?’
‘As much as you’ll ever need. It’s in a bank account.’
‘Cool. Do we get a debit card with that or something?’
He turned to her. ‘That’s one of many things I’m going to need to gothrough with you… before…’ His voice trailed off.
‘Before what?’
Foster looked uncomfortable. ‘Before I leave.’
‘Leave? Leave! You can’t leave us! Neither of us know what the heck we’redoing just yet. Jesus, I… I certainly don’t — ’
