The mayan prophecy (Timeriders # 8) (31 page)

‘Does – does it normally take so long?’ whispered Bertie anxiously. ‘Are you sure your d-device is working p-properly, Mr O’Connor?’

Liam nodded. ‘Don’t worry, it’s working.’

The first faint grey stain of dawn was lighting the sky over the carpet of jungle below the cave. By the wan light, they watched mist gathering in ghostly pools far beneath them. Daylight couldn’t arrive soon enough.

‘Sometimes it’s immediate, other times we might have to wait a few hours.’ He offered Bertie a reassuring smile. ‘Relax. The portal will open for us soon enough.’

He turned back to Rashim. ‘I still can’t believe what you said earlier. Sal? Are you sure you saw her? I mean really sure?’ Liam shook his head. ‘Maybe you’re remembering it wrong –’

‘I saw her face on the seeker, Liam!’ His eyes looked haunted. ‘It was definitely her face. She was that thing, or at least, she was
a
part
of that thing.’

He felt something cold ride his spine. A shiver. Not from the cool breath of the pre-dawn breeze, nor was it like the pleasant shudder from a lover’s whispered words or the touch of tender, feather-light fingers. Instead, it was the prickling sensation that accompanies a terrible and sudden understanding. He realized what had become of Sal.

‘That thing was not Sal, not any more,’ uttered Maddy. ‘That thing – that monster wasn’t her.’ She looked at Liam with eyes raw and red from crying. ‘It was … it was a
corruption
of her. A twisted version of her.’ She rubbed at those red eyes. They looked painfully sore.

‘Perhaps it was the “essence” of her,’ said Rashim, ‘a
borrowed
part of her consciousness. The darker side.’ He looked up and out at the stars. ‘We all have a dark side, a part of our mind that broods on matters, sometimes wishes upon others the very worst of things.’ He rubbed his cold hands together. ‘Is it possible that in chaos space not only can physical matter be fused together but also consciousness? Our thoughts? That thing could be an amalgamation of many, many people’s minds. A manifestation of their darkest wishes and dreams.’

Liam struggled to believe that thoughts as dark as that might have existed in Sal’s mind. ‘She was troubled, for sure,’ he said. ‘I know she was finding it hard to accept what she was. But I can’t believe she ever meant us any harm.’

Maddy nodded slowly. ‘Not the Sal we knew. But …’ Maddy was going to say more, but instead she fell silent.

‘What? But what?’

‘I think …’ She closed her eyes, and a fresh tear leaked out on to her cheek. ‘I think she was in there for a long time, Liam.’ She opened her eyes and gazed out of the open mouth of the cave at the dark outline of the jungle and the subtly lightening sky, just that little bit paler now and closer to dawn.

‘She … she said something about “thousands of years”, Liam.
Thousands
. I don’t know how chaos space works. But you know what it’s like; time can feel distorted in there. Horribly distorted.’

He knew exactly what she meant by that. Sometimes, stepping into a portal and emerging out the other side seemed
to occur in an instant. A heartbeat. Other times, it could seem like several minutes had passed. On those occasions, mercifully few, it was a profoundly disturbing experience; the cloying mist and that feeling of complete isolation, the deadened senses.

Alone … with nothing but yourself, floating in that featureless white soup.

For
thousands of years? Thousands of years of
that
 …?

‘I think she went insane,’ said Maddy. ‘Long ago – centuries ago, in that white, she must have quietly gone insane. And all that was left of her mind was just vague memories of us. All twisted up and confused.’

‘Jay-zus,’ Liam uttered. All of a sudden he wasn’t so sure he wanted the transponder to be working, for the portal to open up here in the cave. To step once again through that place.

Maddy met his gaze. Perhaps she was thinking the very same thing: what if this time while heading home something went wrong, left one of them stranded forever? Like one of those lost souls?

‘We could stay here,’ said Liam. ‘Stay in 1479?’

Bertie looked alarmed. ‘Oh no! I’ll not stay here! Please! We must return to –’

‘Information,’ said Bob. ‘Our current base of operations contains a fully functional displacement machine. This cannot be left behind intact.’

Bob didn’t need to elaborate. There was no real choice. They had to go back. They couldn’t leave things as they were. Eventually Delbert or someone else would kick the door in and discover what was inside. In the hands of Delbert, perhaps the conniving merchant would not know what to make of it? But then he might pass on his discovery to much smarter men who would understand what power they had at their fingertips.

What would the secretive ruling elite of Victorian England do with technology like that in their hands? The inquisitive minds of those learned gentlemen would want to explore it. Would want to visit the past with their hunting rifles and notebooks, pith helmets and magnifying glasses, to joyride the past, leaving their muddy footprints all over history and not care, probably not even understand, the damage they might be doing.

‘Bob is right,’ said Maddy. ‘We do need to go back.’

‘And s-soon – for the love of God! Soon!’ whispered Bertie, hugging his knees. ‘Before that monster finds us hiding away up here!’

‘It is unlikely to follow us here,’ said Rashim. ‘I imagine it will want to stay near that beam, to replenish its energy.’

‘If the column behaves as it did on previous occasions,’ said Becks, ‘it should have automatically closed itself after less than half an hour. The seeker will have no access to the tachyon beam and be unable to restore its energy level.’ She shrugged. ‘It will eventually … 
die
.’

Liam hunched his shoulders. ‘I think we’re safe up here for the moment.’ He turned to Bob and Becks. ‘Sniffing any particles yet?’

Both silently shook their heads.

Liam sighed. ‘What the hell’s keeping computer-Bob?’

The conversation died to an uneasy silence and they sat for a long while, listening to the
tap
,
tap
,
tap
of moisture dripping from some fissure in the roof of the cave, and watching the sky gradually lighten and the faintest bloom of peach stain the far horizon as the sun, still unseen, raced to catch up to its appointment with dawn. Liam discreetly sneaked a look at Maddy. He could see moisture glint in her eyes, see her swiping tears silently from her cheeks. He wondered who she was thinking about, who she was crying for. Sal? Or Adam?

‘I … I need to relieve myself,’ said Bertie quietly.

Liam turned to look at him. ‘Well go on, then. You don’t need to announce it.’

‘But where?’

Outside on the ledge it might be a little slippery with the morning dew. ‘Back there somewhere.’ Liam gestured into the cave. ‘Where those wall paintings are is far back enough.’

Bertie swallowed anxiously and peered into the gloom. ‘It’s dark.’

Liam tossed a torch across to him. ‘There you go. Button’s on the top. Don’t go too far.’

Its movements were governed by ‘committee’, by a community of mind fragments. Pieces of consciousness from so many tortured souls, all of them confused, frightened – but most of all, angry. One fragment, however, seemed to hold sway over the others. It had a vague recollection of who it once was, a girl. Incalculable years, centuries ago … it had been a girl.

A girl called Sal.

The instinct of the collective was to withdraw. The entity’s rage had been spent, its desire for revenge sated. And now, feeling itself weakening, it needed to return from whence it came, to drink energy again, or else wither away to nothing.

But the one voice, the girl’s, had a clearer goal. A far stronger imperative. What remained of her mind recalled those faces; once upon a time those faces belonged to the dearest of friends, almost like family … then, they became her betrayers.

She remembered them and how they wanted to take something from her. What it was that they’d wanted to take came and went, just like its form phased from energy to material. But she recalled again now. They wanted to erase the girl she’d once been.

Yes … I … was … once … real
.

Her will called out above the fragmented noise of all the other confused voices. And drove the entity to leave behind the large
room and the bloody carnage it had wrought there. To wander through the darkness, the silence of this abandoned city … 
and find them!

The entity could feel its energy seeping away, and with less energy its form was beginning to shrink. No longer a towering, seething cyclone, it was something smaller, yet still very much substantial. It drifted down an alleyway, finally hesitating at the edge of a large open area.

The voice guiding the collective retrieved fleeting age-old images from a distant past. From the time when she had been a girl.

A girl with ‘friends’. She had been with those ‘friends’; she recalled seeing this open area from some vantage point, from somewhere higher up.

They had emerged from a long, dark space. She remembered that. She dug deep into what was left of her tangled mind. She remembered darkness, and a light at the end. She remembered emerging from the dark and the pleasant sensation of the warmth of sunlight on her face.

A tunnel
.

That dark space had been a tunnel. They’d stepped into sunlight and gazed in awe down upon this very place.

The entity drifted across the plaza, towards a low stone wall. It phased from a gliding cloud of energy to something material – a three-legged monstrosity that morphed form as it paced awkwardly, then back to drifting energy again. It began to ascend a narrow stepped walkway, littered with discarded belongings: sandals, necklaces of beads, robes, baskets of clay tablets … the detritus of a panicked departure.

More memories began to form in its consciousness. Nothing more than a confusing slide-show of images that made little sense to her. She saw a giant muscular man. Not human, but
more like a simple automaton. She saw a dark home of bricks and crumbling mortar. She saw a young man with a plume of silver hair and a lopsided grin. She saw a menagerie of pitiful human-like creatures dressed in rags of clothing, brutally gunned down by a row of soldiers in crimson tunics. She saw two tall towers in a busy city, gushing plumes of dark smoke into a clear blue sky. She saw the very same city as ash and ruins, and pale creatures with weeping sores on their skin and milk-eyes glaring out at her from darkened spaces. A lifetime lived by someone that used to be her.

The entity drifted to a halt before an archway of darkness, the entrance to a tunnel. And she knew for certain that they, the faces she remembered, the ones she sought, had come this way.

She knew they were waiting for something to appear. Waiting for something to take them home. She recalled that’s how it worked … as friends together, they’d travelled. Different places. Different times. And to do it they’d had to step through a window into Hell.

She couldn’t quite remember why, but it’s what they did.

Then her phasing memory finally reminded her why. Finally made sense of things.

They travelled through time … seeking the girl I once was … to find her. And kill her.

The entity’s fading energy crackled and rippled once more, like dying fireplace embers revived by the gentle puff of a breath.

Then, silently, it glided forward into the dark hole in the rock wall.

Bertie stared at the cave wall in front of him as he went about his business. One-handed, he panned the torch across the strange painted markings in front of him. Having spent a week in this long-lost city, some of these symbols he recognized now. He’d seen their distinct shapes in the decor of the temple buildings, in the colourful tapestries of beads that hung everywhere. Even in the designs these people had painted, and tattooed, on their faces.

The meanings of these symbols, however, were still no clearer to him.

He reflected for a moment on what Adam had told them – that this whole society had evolved around what their ancestors had once upon a time discovered beneath the ground. Their written language, their costumes, their art, even the city itself borrowed the circular design of that subterranean chamber.

The poor young fellow had posited two theories: that either these people had stumbled across the chamber and built their city around it; or, far more likely, they had been living here when the Archaeologists arrived, and had been in awe of them, perhaps even honoured by those ‘gods’ with the task of guarding the chamber, protecting it from prying eyes.

And for hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years they had.

‘Then we came along, roused an unspeakable creature from the depths
of Hell and let it destroy everything.’
Those had been Adam’s words.

His mind flashed images of what he’d witnessed in the last few hours and he bit his lip and tried to think of other things – homely, banal,
normal
things.

His unpleasant boss Delbert’s ugly pug face.

The Fox and Firkin public house, down the bottom of Farringdon Street.

Mrs Chichester, his ample-bosomed and ruddy-faced landlady.

His small, bare bedroom.

His parents.

Somehow, all those images and memories seemed one step removed from him. No longer were they the images of a very familiar and wholly unexciting life. No. They were now glimpses of another young man’s life.

In just these last few days, Bertie realized, everything about him had changed. Everything he thought he knew about this world was wrong. The ordered nature of things, the predictable Newtonian safety of a clockwork universe … all of that was wrong, wrong, wrong.

The universe was chaotic and incomprehensible to him now. Worse than that, the future wasn’t the gleaming utopian dream he’d always imagined it might be: a world where the innovations of science would provide kingly comfort and luxury to every man, woman and child on the planet.

No. The future was a frightening place. In his lifetime, there would be things called ‘world wars’, where science would be leveraged to make terrible devices of wholesale destruction. Where murder would be conducted on an industrial scale.

And moreover, this terrifying future – if Miss Carter was to be believed – was ultimately doomed.

‘Bertie …?’

He turned to his left at the sound of the voice. Soft, female
… coming out of the darkness. He panned the torch round and, emerging out of the gloom, he saw a small figure.

Sal
.

She took a tentative step towards him.

‘What … how …?’ Bertie quickly buttoned up his flies and backed up one step. He swallowed nervously, all of a sudden his mouth was bone-dry. ‘Miss V-Vikram – Saleena, how … how d-did you …!’

She shook her head, frowned. She looked lost. ‘I … I don’t know … I’m not sure. I remember stepping into that force field. Then it’s all jumbled up. Things … nothing making sense to me. I’m a bit confused, to be honest.’

Bertie could see her face in the envelope of light. She looked afraid and very confused. Traumatized. Like a child.

A lost and frightened child.

Yet he had seen her just a few hours ago, her face as part of a monster. Seen that face become a snarling mockery of itself, a rictus on a deformed jackal-like skull. A head on a long, distended neck, one of many.

Bertie recalled a medieval engraving he’d seen once in a museum, ‘The Whore of Babylon’, picturing the beast on which she rode – a beast so similar, a beast with seven heads, each one depicting a different Catholic sin.

‘Bertie …’ She stepped closer, there were tears on her cheeks. ‘I’m so frightened.’

The poor girl must have escaped the hell she was trapped in. Perhaps the monster had simply seen her face in that hellish dimension and decided to copy it.

Cruelly chosen to mimic her, to make a monster of her.

‘You poor, poor thing,’ he cooed softly. ‘Come …’ He stretched his arms out towards her, to hold her. She looked like she desperately needed that right now.

She smiled. ‘Thank you for being so kind.’ She reached towards him, and as she did, Bertie felt the knuckles and fingers of his extended hand prickle from an intense heat.

Instinctively, his hand recoiled before it burned.

And then he understood what he was sharing this small dark space with. He began to back up, one faltering step, then another.

‘Don’t go,’ she pleaded softly. ‘Don’t leave me here alone.’

He shook his head. Prickles of sweat rolled down his waxen face. The heat was increasing, he could feel it burning his cheeks. He could feel it through his linen shirt. ‘You … you … you’re not her – you’re n-not Saleena.’

‘I don’t want to be left all alone.’ Her eyes spilled more tears, her lips curled. ‘Not
alone
.’ She cocked her head as she looked at him.

‘You were so kind to me.’ She gazed up at him with a face that ached with remorse, with grieving for what-might-have-beens. ‘I remember … I remember you brought me such a lovely cake once …’

Her fingers brushed a clump of damp moss on the cave wall. It instantly smouldered, smoked, then burst into flames. ‘Don’t let me be all alone … in there … for eternity …’ The flames flickered momentarily, sending shadow-puppets dancing across the painted wall.

‘Come with me, Bertie … we could be together, you and me.’

Bertie whimpered. ‘P-please … don’t hurt me! Don’t –’

‘I’m not a monster.’ Hot tears dripped from her jaw and spilled on to the floor. They hissed as they spattered on the cool stone. ‘Don’t leave me here.’

He turned and ran. ‘IT’S HERE!’