Liam shook his head, put his hands on his hips and smiled. ‘So, I see you’ve found a sense of humour, Becks!’
‘I have been observing and learning humorous dialogue exchanges, Liam. I am now capable of delivering basic humorous responses.’
‘Well done!’ he shouted back.
‘You are all little chickens. Cluck, cluck, cluck,’ she said again with a hint of pride in her dry voice.
Not exactly hilarious, Liam decided, as he looked around at the concerned expressions on the others. But at least her AI was having a go at being more human.
‘Is she all right?’ asked Juan.
Liam shrugged. ‘It’s her attempt at a joke. Don’t worry. She’s fine.’ He looked up at her. ‘Becks! Maybe we should save the joking around for later? All right? You’re scaring the kids.’
Her face straightened. ‘Affirmative.’
‘OK, then.’ He turned back to the others. ‘Who’s first?’
There wasn’t exactly a rush.
Liam was the last one up.
As Becks hefted him up on to the ridge and helped him to his feet, he could see she looked fatigued. In fact, he realized, it was the first time he’d ever seen her looking like that. Genuinely spent. ‘You OK, Becks?’
‘Recommendation: I should now consume protein and then rest for several hours,’ she said. Her grey eyes met his for a moment and he wondered if there was a hint of gratitude in her expression, gratitude that he’d bothered to ask if she was OK.
‘OK, you do that,’ he said, slapping her shoulder. ‘We could all probably do with a rest. Maybe we should set up camp here for tonight?’
She considered that for a moment, panning her eyes around the immediate surroundings. ‘This is an acceptable location.’
‘Right. I’ll tell the others.’ He wandered across the top of the peak towards the rest of them. They were clustered together and staring out over the sloping ridge on the far side of the peak. From where he stood, he could see nothing but a rich blue sky and a far-off top-heavy bank of cloud hanging above a flat horizon like a giant floating anvil.
‘What is it? Can you see something?’ He clattered over, kicking stones and raising dust until he was standing right beside them. ‘Oh… my,’ his voice fluttered softly.
‘There’s all the dinosaurs you’ve ever wanted to see, kid,’ said Whitmore to Franklyn.
The peak sloped down gently, grey shale gradually giving way in patches to an enormous plain of verdant grassland dotted with islands of jungle — tall straight deciduous canopy trees draped with the vines they’d come to rely on. Around the patches of jungle, herds of huge beasts Liam couldn’t begin to name grazed lazily in the late- afternoon sun. Between the slowly meandering groups of giants, smaller packs of fleet-footed beasts flocked and weaved in an endless zig-zagging race.
‘My God,’ whispered Kelly. ‘This is really… quite… incredible.’
Whitmore and Franklyn were grinning like a pair of children in a toy store.
Beyond the sweeping plain, Liam noticed the flat horizon changed from a drab olive colour to a rich turquoise.
Laura was frowning at that, confused. ‘Is that an ocean over there? I don’t recall Texas having a freakin’ ocean in the middle of it.’
Franklyn nodded. ‘Sixty-five million years ago there was,’ he said, adopting the learned air of a college principal. ‘An inland ocean that ran north-south up the middle of America, cutting it in two. In fact, Laura, you probably wouldn’t recognize Earth if you were looking at it from orbit right now.’
Liam watched in silence for a good minute, stunned, like everyone else, into stillness and quiet as he gazed out on a scene that no human before had ever witnessed, nor should ever witness again. A moment of incalculable privilege, uniqueness. Once upon a time — and it felt like another lifetime now — he’d been standing in the creaking bowels of a dying ship, waist deep in ice-cold water, facing certain death and crying like a small child. And there was Foster, holding his hand out to him uttering a promise that if he joined him there were going to be things he’d see, wonderful things. Incredible things.
‘Well, this is certainly one of them,’ Liam whispered to himself.
‘What’s that?’ said Kelly.
Liam roused himself and grinned. ‘Nothing, I just said… so, this is where all you big fellas have been hiding.’
A good-natured ripple of laughter spread among them.
‘We’re camping up here tonight,’ he announced, studying the distant strip of ocean blue on the horizon. ‘And tomorrow we’ll be at the seaside, so we will.’
CHAPTER 37
65 million years BC, jungle
Liam savoured the warmth of the fire on his face and hands. It had turned out to be surprisingly cool up here on the peak once the sun had gone down, and his sweat-damp clothes had begun to feel uncomfortably chilly against his skin.
In the sky above the dark plain spread out before them, the last stain of day spread a warm, rich, amber light along the flat horizon and the night was beginning to fill with the distant haunting chorus of creatures calling to each other across miles of open plain.
He heard the scuff of boots and skittering shale approaching out of the dark. Becks appeared and sat down heavily next to him. ‘Hello, Liam.’
‘Hello,’ he replied, chewing on the rubbery corner of his reheated grilled mudfish. He looked at her eyes, glistening as they reflected the campfire in front of them. He wondered what went on behind them when she wasn’t busy assessing mission priorities or threat factors. He wondered if that tiny organic brain linked to her computer could appreciate how beautiful that amber sky was… or enjoy the pleasing sensation of warmth from the fire.
‘Your AI’s done a bit of growing again, hasn’t it?’ he said presently. ‘Your cluck, cluck thing earlier was… well, about as funny as one of my old Auntie Noreen’s jokes, but… the thing is it sounded almost human.’
‘Thank you.’ She nodded. ‘It has been useful to me observing these younger humans. Their social interactions are more heavily nuanced by emotional indicators and less restricted by expected convention.’
His face creased as he digested that. ‘You mean they’re more likely to blurt out whatever they’re thinking than adults?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Well now,’ he said, smiling, ‘that’s probably true.’
Laura Whitely, sitting opposite, caught what they were saying over the babble of dinosaur talk going on between Kelly, Whitmore and Franklyn. ‘I don’t blurt,’ she said. ‘Children do that.’
Becks’s gaze shifted to her. ‘Are you not a child?’
She gave Liam an is she for real? look, one eyebrow cocked with incredulity. ‘Excuse me? I’m fifteen. I’m not a child. I’m a teenager.’
‘You still have four years of physical and mental growth to undergo before you are technically an adult human being,’ said Becks. ‘Optimum mental and physical functionality is obtained at nineteen years of age. This makes you still a child.’
‘Yeah? And what about you? What are you, then?’
Becks’s jaw dropped open, a facial expression Liam had not seen her pull before. Nor an expression he could recall Bob ever pulling either, for that matter. Becks’s eyes gazed at the fire for a long, long time, the lids fluttering slightly every now and then.
She’s really giving that some serious thought.
‘I will…’ she began after a while. ‘I will never be a complete human being.’
Laura’s face softened ever so slightly. A second ago she’d looked like she wanted to square up to Becks, now
