CHAPTER 13
1994, Norwich
Adam’s hand throbbed. The tall girl with the surprisingly strong grip hadn’t in fact broken his finger, just stretched the tendons in his hand. Not broken, but still incredibly painful. Under normal circumstances it would have been painful enough for him to take himself to the campus walk-in surgery for a splint or icepack and some serious painkillers, but he was distracted enough that the throbbing in his finger was, for the moment, ignorable.
‘
He’d nearly laughed out loud at that. If he had, it would have been the shrill humourless laugh of someone losing their mind. Because this — the stuff they were saying — it was plain crazy, right? Because … because 2001 was seven years from now. 2001 was the future.
He nodded and chuckled to himself. ‘Yes … that’s it. Maybe I’ve gone completely mad.’ He was halfway to accepting that was what was wrong with him. His two visitors, his throbbing finger, all of it, were just elements of a paranoid delusion. After all, he’d been hiding out in this room for nearly a week, living like a hermit. Beginning to see things.
He decided that the sensible little voice in his head was most probably right, that this was a sign it was time to go see a campus councillor. And maybe, just maybe, he or she could explain to him in a perfectly rational way how come he’d found a message, written in modern English, in a document nearly a thousand years old; how come he was imagining visitations from time-travel girls from the future.
He laughed at how crazy it all sounded.
He was just about ready to admit he’d gone completely insane and help when he noticed a twist of paper on his bed where the girl —
Only it didn’t.
‘Errr … Adam to Mission Control … it’s, uhh … it’s …’ he muttered, turning the twist of coloured paper over in his hand. ‘This is real? Right? I’m not hallucinating
Mission Control had nothing useful to add at this point in time.
He looked closely at the paper in his hand. It was a ticket stub. An entry ticket to what appeared to be a nightclub or a bar or something. The address was West 51st Street, New York. What’s more, it had a date and an admission time stamped faintly like ticker-tape along the bottom.
20:21 — 09-09-2001.
All of a sudden he felt light-headed: dizzy and queasy, excited and terrified all at the same time. He looked again at the faintly printed time and date: 9 September 2001, seven years from now, the girl who’d just left his room was going to go to this New York nightclub.
It was one thing too many for him. He lost balance and flopped face forward on to his mattress.
Outside he heard the clump of boots on the stairs and a moment later a heavy fist on his door. ‘Hey, Adam! Who were those girls?’ Lance’s voice sounded far away; it sounded utterly inconsequential.
‘Suit yourself … you stay in there, you little freak. But tell your weird freak friends not to come round so late next time, right?’
Adam heard none of that. He was already busy mapping out the next seven years of his life.
CHAPTER 14
2001, New York
‘All right, stand clear, everyone!’
Sal crouched down and thumbed an icon on the growth tube’s small glowing touchscreen. A motor softly whirred at the bottom of the perspex tube and it slowly tilted backwards to a forty-five degree angle. A moment later the bottom of the tube opened and a flood-tide of foul-smelling gunk splashed out on to the floor of the back room.
Bob’s glistening, baby-smooth body slipped out of the tube and across the floor like a freshly landed blue marlin on the foredeck of a fishing boat.
‘It’s a boy!’ announced Liam.
‘This time round,’ added Maddy.
The newly birthed clone stirred on the floor, grey eyes opening and gazing up at them. They crouched around him,
The clone opened his mouth and vomited a river of pink gunk down the front of his muscular chest.
‘Oh, that’s our Bob all right,’ said Sal.
‘Negative.’ Becks squatted down to inspect the slimy naked body on the floor. ‘The AI designated “Bob” has yet to be uploaded.’
‘She’s right,’ said Maddy. ‘It’s not our old buddy yet. Just a meat combat unit.’
‘Og gub ber smuh,’ gurgled the clone in agreement.
‘And just as moronic as he was last time,’ she added. ‘Come on, let’s get him cleaned up and dressed, then we can get the software upload started.’
Liam placed a hand under one bulging arm, Becks the other and together they helped him to his feet. Liam winked at the bewildered-looking giant. ‘Welcome back, Bob.’
Half an hour later, hosed down and no longer stinking like a pile of rotten meat, dried and dressed in a mix- and-match collection of oversized clothes, Bob sat motionless on Liam’s bunk. His eyelids flickered rapidly as terabytes of data filled the empty silicon wafer embedded in his skull. Becks was overseeing the software transfer process while Maddy had called the other two to join her around the kitchen table.
‘So you see … we’ve got to at least go and take a look. Make sure this Voynich Manuscript isn’t going to totally give the game away.’ She shrugged. ‘It isn’t going to be a particularly secret agency much longer if one of our teams is blabbing away all our secrets in that document. Right?’
Liam nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘Does that mean Liam might meet another “operative” like himself?’ asked Sal.
Maddy shrugged. ‘It’s entirely possible he’ll make contact.’ She turned to him. ‘And, if you do, then obviously the most important thing you need to communicate is that they
‘Right.’
‘So …’ Maddy consulted a pad of paper on the table. ‘So the time we’re sending you back to, Liam, is 1194 — that’s when this Adam Lewis said the document carbon dates to.’ She looked up from her notes. ‘I don’t think carbon dating can be
‘Ahh now, I’ve been to England before. With me uncle and me dad, so.’
‘A place called Kirklees Priory. I did a search on it. It’s famous because it’s the place where Robin Hood died and was buried. Supposedly.’
