earlier, revealing red-raw muscle tissue and bone. A layer of skin over the top of that would have offered her damaged limb some protection — instead the fragile workings of her arm were now clogged with dirt and twigs and leaves and all manner of bugs.
An infection advisory flashed quietly in the background of her mind, along with several others that warned her that her biological combat chassis had suffered enough damage to warrant immediate medical attention. As she watched tongues of orange lash up into the Cretaceous night sky towards a moon a hat size too big, she detected the first precursor particles of the scheduled window and stepped towards the open ground where it was due to open.
She looked back one last time at the fire and picked out the dark twisted limbs of the hominid species amid the flames. For a moment she felt something she couldn’t identify: sadness, was it? Guilt? All she knew was that it came from a part of her mind that didn’t organize thoughts into mission priorities and strategic options.
A sphere of churning air suddenly winked into existence in front of her and calmly, impassively, she stepped forward through sixty-five million years into a dimly lit brick archway.
The first face her eyes registered through the shimmering was Liam O’Connor’s. He smiled tiredly and she momentarily wondered if his mind was flashing the human equivalent set of damage advisory warnings.
‘Welcome home, Becks,’ he said softly and then, without any warning, he clasped his arms around her. ‘We did it!’ he muttered into her ear.
She processed the curious gesture and her silicon swiftly came back with the recommendation that returning the demonstration of affection would be an acceptably appropriate response. Her good arm closed around his narrow shoulders.
‘Affirmative, Liam… we did it.’
CHAPTER 80
2001, New York
Monday (time cycle 50)
They stayed for a few days, Edward and Laura. Maddy said they were probably suffering some sort of radiation sickness from the lab explosion and needed some rest and recuperation. It was nice to have some new faces around here for a while, anyway. But Maddy said they had to go. She was right, of course. They had things to do, lives to go and lead.
But not long lives… not Edward, anyway.
I read his file on our computer. This is so sad. He will write his great maths paper in 2029 that will change the world, and he’ll be just twenty-two when he does that. But then he’ll be dead from cancer before his twenty- seventh birthday.
Cancer at twenty-seven?
That seems so unfair. Twenty-seven years isn’t a life. It’s just a taster of life, isn’t it? I know I couldn’t have told him that and, even if I could, would it have been fair to tell him? Would anyone want to know the exact day they were going to die? I know I wouldn’t.
We were going to send them back to 2015; that was the original plan. But Maddy figured that wasn’t going to work: they’ve both seen too much; they both know too much. Maybe that’s not so important for the girl Laura. Maybe her life isn’t ever going to affect the world that much. But Chan… he’s everything the future’s going to be. It all kind of starts with what he’s going to one day write in a paper.
So what did we do? We left them outside when the field reset. We watched with the shutter open. We watched time come and take them away. Reality just erased them, like someone deleting files off a computer. Maddy says she’s pretty sure that’s going to make things all right again. Reality will bring them back. They’ll be born once more, like all the other kids who died; they’ll be born… be babies, toddlers, kids, teenagers a second time. Only this time they’ll visit some energy lab in 2015 and then get to go home and tell their mums and dads what a totally boring day trip they had.
Well, at least that’s what we’re hoping.
And what about the person, whoever that was, who tried to kill Edward? I suppose we’ll know whether history’s been changed enough that he or she makes some different choices. If we get the same message again from the future… then, well, we’ll have to deal with this all over again, won’t we? Hopefully not.
We just have to wait and see if this fixes everything. Nothing’s certain. Nothing’s final.
‘Everything’s fluid’… that’s Maddy’s phrase. What does that really mean?
So, the female support unit, Becks (still trying to get used to that name), is still healing. Those creatures really messed her arm up by the look of it. Bob says the regrown skin will probably show a lot of scarring, and the muscles and tendons may never be fully functional again. Which led to an argument between Maddy and Liam.
Maddy suggested flushing the body and growing a new support unit, one of the big tough male ones. But Liam got angry. He said ‘she deserves better’.
I don’t know what I think. After all, they’re just organic robots, aren’t they? And whatever knowledge her AI picked up would be saved, right?
But Liam says there’s more to them than just the computer… there’s something else in there, something human-like in their heads. So maybe he’s right. It does seem unfair to do that to her. After all, it seems she did really well.
Anyway, she’s got a name… I mean, how can you just flush something away that’s got, like, a name? It’s wrong, isn’t it?
Seems like the argument’s all settled now, though. Looks like we’re keeping her but also growing another Bob. Maddy said there seemed to be nothing in the ‘how to’ manual that says we can’t have two support units.
So why not?
CHAPTER 81
2001, New York
The old man was sitting on the park bench and throwing nuggets of dough from the crusty end of a hot-dog bun to a strutting pack of impatient pigeons.
‘I knew I’d find you here,’ said Maddy.
He looked up at her and smiled a greeting. She closed her eyes and turned her face up towards the clear blue September sky and for a moment savoured the warmth of the sun on her pallid cheeks.
‘Unobscured sun and a good hot dog… that’s what you said,’ she added, ‘and where else in Manhattan’s forest of skyscrapers are you going to get that?’
Foster laughed drily. ‘Clever girl.’
She flopped down on the park bench next to him. ‘We’ve really missed you. I’ve missed you.’
‘It’s only been a few hours,’ he said, tossing another doughy nugget out among the birds.
‘What? It’s been months — ’
‘Yes, but for me,’ he said, ‘just a few hours.’ He looked at her. ‘Remember, I’m out of the loop now. I’m out of the time bubble. I said goodbye to you on a Monday morning.’ He looked down at his watch. ‘And now it’s nearly one o’clock on the very same Monday.’
She shook her head. ‘Yes, of course. Stupid of me. I knew that.’
They sat in silence for a while and watched a toddler on reins attempt to scare away the pigeons by stamping her little feet. The birds merely gave her a wide berth as she ambled through and then returned, to hungrily resume pecking at the crumbs of bread on the ground in her wake.
‘You hinted you’d be here, didn’t you? When we parted?’
Foster nodded. ‘I suppose I felt a little guilty leaving you so soon.’ He puffed out his sallow cheeks. ‘But I’m dying, Maddy. I won’t last very much longer.’
‘The tachyon corruption?’
