Bob nodded. ‘We worked efficiently together.’
‘That we most certainly did.’
He gazed at the shop window beside him; a mobile-phone store, the window peppered with deals on call tariffs and unlimited texts.
‘Ahhh, yer eeejit!’
‘What is the matter, Liam?’
‘I forgot to turn me bleedin’ thingamajiggy on again.’ He fished deep into his trouser pocket for the mobile phone Maddy had issued him with. He was always forgetting to switch the infernal thing on. He was in for a moan from her if she’d tried his number without any luck. He fumbled with the tiny buttons and finally the small screen flickered to life.
Seven missed calls.
And all of them from her.
Oh, great.
He quickly dialled her number and she picked up on the first ring. ‘C’mon, Liam! What’s the point in you having a freakin’ phone if you never turn the thing on!’
‘Ahh… I’m sorry, Mads, really sorry. I was just — ’
‘Get home now!’
‘Why? What’s up?’
‘Just get back here now! We’ve got a problem!’
CHAPTER 23
2001, New York
‘It was some little kid’s Yankees baseball cap,’ said Maddy. ‘Wasn’t it?’
Sal nodded. ‘That NY logo on the front you see everywhere, it changed to a trident. Just changed in the blink of an eye.’
Liam lowered the shutter door. ‘So?’
‘And so, as any old dittobrain knows, the trident is the symbol for the Greek god, Poseidon. Right?’
‘Of course.’ Liam nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, I knew that.’
‘And that’s what I figured until we got back here and started doing some data-trawling,’ said Maddy. ‘Something to do with Greek gods. But then it was pretty clear this is a Roman thing. See, the trident also works for Neptune; that’s the Roman version of the Greek god, Poseidon.’
‘Hold on,’ said Liam, ‘it could be either, then, couldn’t it? A contamination from Roman or Greek times?’
Maddy shook her head. ‘No, this is definitely a Roman thing.’ She led him over towards the desk. ‘We’ve got us a doozy of a change right here. Computer-Bob flagged it up straight away.’ She sat down. ‘Bob, put up that list from our internal database.’
›Yes, Maddy.
A list of names and dates appeared on the screen in front of them.
‘Roman emperors,’ she said. ‘That’s the whole list. All the way through the Roman Empire.’ She turned to address the screen. ‘Bob, can you put up the list from our external source?’
Another list appeared on the screen next to the first.
‘Spot the difference,’ said Sal, taking a seat beside Maddy.
Liam spotted instantly. ‘It changes after the third fella.’
Caligula.
‘You got it,’ said Maddy. She pointed with a biro, running it down the screen. ‘The correct data says he should have been Caesar from Ad 37 to 41. That’s just four years. Now look at the external data — we’re drawing this from a database location at bibliotheca. universalis/libri. cldvi. See? We’ve got the Emperor Caligula ruling for nearly thirty years.’
‘Weird,’ said Sal, looking at the database address. ‘A Latin Internet.’
Liam squinted as he looked at the names on the screen. ‘And the names are all different after him too.’
‘Right.’ Maddy sat back in her chair. ‘So someone somewhere has just made sure Caligula stays in power for much longer than he’s meant to.’
‘There’d be a much bigger change now, though,’ said Liam. ‘Wouldn’t there?’
‘Well, sheesh, God knows what we’re going to get when the next ripple arrives.’
Sal tutted. ‘Someone’s just been very naughty in Roman times.’
Liam looked at them both. ‘So-o-o…?’
Maddy sighed and tossed the biro on to her cluttered desk. ‘So…’
They shared an uncomfortably long pause, a who’s-going-to-crack-first silence. The question hung in the air between them, not asked and not answered.
‘So,’ said Sal, ‘are we dealing with this, or are we still on strike?’
‘This is a significant contamination,’ rumbled Bob.
‘Yeah, thanks for that, Dr Brainiac,’ said Maddy. She huffed irritably. ‘It would just be so nice if this Waldstein guy actually — you know — bothered to acknowledge what we’re doing here. I want answers before I do another thing for this agency.’
‘Still heard nothing from that advert?’ asked Liam.
‘Not a thing. Nada. Zip.’
‘We cannot ignore this contamination,’ said Bob.
›Bob is correct.
Maddy cursed. ‘Great, now I got both of ’em nagging me.’
Liam shrugged. ‘I suppose I wouldn’t mind having a quick look at them Romans.’ He offered Maddy a conciliatory smile. ‘And maybe the Bobs are right?’
‘If Foster’s telling the truth, Maddy,’ Sal said quietly, ‘if we really are the only team…?’
‘But what if we let it go?’ said Maddy. ‘Let this small timeline change work its way up to whatever year Waldstein is watching us from. Maybe that’ll make him take notice of us. Make him answer our questions.’
‘We cannot ignore this contamination,’ said Bob again.
She balled her fist on the table. A soft gasp of frustration deep in her throat.
Sal looked uncertainly at her. ‘There will be more changes coming soon, Maddy. You know how it goes.’
‘Aye… we ought to do something.’
Maddy turned in her chair to look at them. ‘Right.’ She nodded angrily. ‘Clearly I’m the one being the stupid idiot here. And clearly I’m not actually in charge of this team, then. It seems this is in fact a “decision-making committee” and apparently I’ve been outvoted. That about the size of it?’
Sal was right, though. That was the annoying thing. Liam was right too; even their dumb support unit and the networked computers were right. They couldn’t just do nothing; couldn’t just sit on their hands and ride this one out.
‘Crud. I just wanted to… to wait and see, you know? See if someone else might step in and help out.’ She tried sounding hopeful. ‘Maybe even force Waldstein to come back and pay us a visit. You never know.’
The silence was deafening.
‘All right. OK… I get it. All right.’ She pushed her chair back with a squeak of complaint from castor wheels forced across the pitted concrete. ‘I suppose we better start getting organized, then.’
‘What are they?’
‘They’re called babel-buds,’ said Maddy. ‘According to the packet they came in, everyone in the future uses them all the time.’
Liam looked down at them. They looked like flesh-coloured Smarties with a dimple on one side. Maddy opened a small Ziploc plastic bag and dropped two of them in. ‘I checked them. They support seventy-six languages, Latin among them. Just pop them in your ears when you arrive. There’s a spare in case you lose one.’ She looked at his shaggy hair. ‘And since your ears are lost under that mop, no one’s going to see them anyway.’
