know how to decipher it.’
She looked down at the numbers, a meaningless jumble of digits that meant absolutely nothing to her at first glance. But then, very quickly, the pattern began to speak to her. Groups of three numbers, the first into the hundreds, the second being numbers no greater than thirty-five and the last seeming to peak at numbers no greater than fifteen, sixteen. She knew exactly what that was.
‘It’s some kind of a book code.’
‘Clever girl. But now, here’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question. Which book?’
She scanned to the bottom of the numbers and saw the last word of the message.
Magic.
Magic? What the jahulla sort of a clue was tha-?
She looked up at him, a smile slowly spreading across her face. Of course, if Bob had it in his database, so the duplicate AI in the female support unit would also.
‘You know, don’t you?’ said Cartwright.
‘Uh-huh.’ She was almost tempted to tell him the book’s title anyway, since it wasn’t going to be published for another few years yet. Instead she attempted to suppress an irresistible urge to giggle.
The old man sighed patiently. ‘Well, you could, of course, just tell me. Which would be far more pleasant for the pair of us. Or we have a medicine cabinet full of interesting drugs I can pump into you. Some of them with some quite horrific side effects. And failing that there’s always the old-fashioned way.’
‘You take us back to the archway,’ she said, ‘and I’ll decode the rest of this message for you.’
He shook his head. ‘Hmm, now see, my concern is that we get back into that archway of yours and one of you kids’ll shout out something else, and — pop! — you and all that machinery vanishes in a puff of twinkly time travel sparkles and smoke.’
‘She hasn’t told you yet, has she?’
He frowned. ‘Told me what?’
Sal’s smile widened, a nervous twitchy smile. ‘That’s actually really funny.’
‘Funny?’
She nodded. ‘Funny.’
‘Why? What’s funny?’
‘She’s playing with you. How long have I been in here?’
‘Why?’
‘Please… tell me how long?’
He looked down at his watch. ‘A few hours. Why?’
‘Exactly. Please.’
‘Five hours… five and a half hours.’
She giggled again. ‘You don’t have much time left, then.’
The last of the congenial expression was lost from his rumpled face. ‘Stop messing around and tell me what the hell you’re talking about!’
‘Sure,’ she said amicably. ‘Our computer system is locked down for six hours. After that, it’s got orders to totally brick itself if Maddy doesn’t give it another codeword.’
‘Brick?’
‘Fry all the data. All the machinery. Everything.’
His bushy eyebrows both arced, and beneath his jowls his jaw began grinding away again.
‘You ready to take us back now?’ asked Sal politely. ‘I’ll even say “please”.’
CHAPTER 60
65 million years BC, jungle
Broken Claw looked at the others in his family pack, predator eyes meeting predator eyes. In his claws he was still holding the bamboo spear, the bloodied end of it embedded in what was left of the new creature.
His mind worked hard trying to understand what he’d done. Trying to comprehend the fact that it wasn’t his claws that had ended this pale creature’s life, but the long device that he was holding, something other than him. Something he controlled. Something he had… used.
He turned to the others, clicked and growled and mewled softly.
Do you see? We killed the new creature with this.
Their minds, all younger, less developed. His children stared, yellow eyes burning with hatred, but not quite understanding, not just yet.
But he did. And his older, wiser mind stretched a little further. This long stick he held, he understood now what it was and where it came from. They grew along the river in thick clusters. But now it was no longer simply a plant — the new creatures had fashioned it into something else entirely: a deadly weapon.
Something deep in his reptilian mind shifted. Concepts, very simple concepts, looking for each other amid a busy crowd of instinct-driven brain signals, finally finding each other and embracing.
His pack had no communicable sound for the concept. His mind had no word for the idea. But if he’d had a wider range of words to construct his thoughts from then his mind would have been full of words like use, make, build…
His small mind suddenly produced an image, an image of a fast-flowing river and a tree trunk lying across it — a device the new creatures had built to cross the river.
He turned to the others, clicked his teeth and beckoned them to follow.
What he had growing in his mind is what any human being would have called… a plan.
CHAPTER 61
2001, New York
They approached the archway. Cartwright nodded at his men still standing guard outside. He gestured to Forby to join them inside as the shutter cranked noisily up. The other men he instructed to continue guarding the entrance, allowing no one else inside.
One by one they all stooped under the shutter as it clattered to a halt. As he followed the others in, Cartwright glanced up at the sky above Manhattan, beginning to lighten with the first grey stain of dawn. Another hour and it was going to be daylight, New Yorkers getting ready to go to work, and disgruntled civilians building up around the road blocks either end of the Williamsburg Bridge. Traffic police, TV film crews and journalists were surely soon going to add to that, asking his men and the National Guard soldiers where their orders had come from. What the hell was going on? He and his discreet little under-the-radar agency could do without attracting that kind of attention. The terrorist-bomb cover story those men had been given would hold for a little while longer, but not forever.
The last one inside the archway, he pressed the button and the shutter rattled down noisily again. Forby removed his bio-containment hood and then unslung his machine pistol.
‘It’s all right, no need to aim it at the girls,’ said Cartwright. ‘But just have it to hand, uh?’
Forby nodded and lowered his aim.
‘So,’ he continued, approaching the desk stacked with monitors, ‘the computer? Before it’s all fried?’
Maddy nodded. ‘Yes, of course. DOMINOES.’
Cartwright shook his head. Of course. You idiot, Lester. He looked at the Domino’s pizza boxes strewn across the desk, and would have slapped himself if he’d been alone.
The dialogue box on one of the screens flickered to life as a cursor flashed and scuttled across the screen with new text.
› Welcome back, Maddy.
‘Hi, Bob,’ she said. ‘I’m in time, aren’t I?’
