TimeRiders 05 - Gates of Rome (7 page)

The old man looked over his shoulder at the chaos on the grid. ‘Anyway, this is not the project I signed up to lead.’

Rashim knew exactly what he meant by that. This frenetic, undignified scramble away from the sudden and messy end of mankind was not what Project Exodus had been about. Even though it was a flagrant breach of ILA Ruling 234, known informally as Waldstein’s Law, there was something worthy to it. The idea of rebooting civilization back in a time before man had begun to suck the world dry; the idea of bringing back twenty-first-century knowledge and enlightenment to an ignorant world that believed in gods and omens, repression and slavery. There was a germ of hope in all of that.

Hope. Something there seemed to be precious little of in this poisoned and dying world.

But these weren’t the specially selected candidates, quietly informed over a year ago to settle their personal affairs and be ready to be collected and taken to the Exodus facility. It was a random collection of the rich, the
connected
… and, in a few cases, the plain lucky-to-be-grabbed-at-the-last-moment. A poor cross-section of candidates to be sending on such an important mission.

‘So you’re staying, Dr Yatsushita?’

He nodded.

‘You’ll die.’

‘We
all
die eventually, Rashim.’

‘I’ll stay with –’

‘No! There needs to be a project technician with them. As senior technician on the grid, you will have full authority! I will make that official with a data entry.’

Rashim shook his head. ‘Me in charge of them? Look, I’m just a –’

‘There is a mission protocol. Mission jurisdiction. They are all aware of this and signed contracts of agreement to come along. They must accept you as Project Exodus leader.’

Rashim looked across at the vice-president.

‘Yes,’ said Yatsushita, ‘even he must accept you as his …’ The old man paused, smiling. ‘… as his
boss
.’ He nodded at the vice-president, the prince, the dictator and a handful of others – all of them clearly elated to have made it into the facility before the security lockdown.

‘Don’t let any of those parasites become leader, Rashim.’ He smiled sadly. ‘Let this be a proper new beginning for mankind. Eh?’

Rashim nodded, stood up, pushed his chair back on its castor wheels. Beyond the calm of the small enclave of cubicles, the hangar was a riot of noise and activity. Voices raised in confusion, fear, excitement. The clattering of two dozen military combat units weighed down with carbon-flex body armour, weapons and equipment. The whirring of exoskel-kinetic loaders depositing heavy crates of supplies into specially holo-flagged grid markings. The deep rumble of three Mobile Command Vehicles backing into their large grid slots.

Dr Yatsushita reached a hand out and grasped one of his tightly. ‘The military units are programmed to follow the Exodus protocols. They will accept your authority, Rashim, once I’ve logged you in as my replacement.’

‘Dr Yatsushita, please, you have to come. I’m not ready for this.’ Rashim looked at the dictator, the prince, the politicians
and the billionaires. ‘I can’t lead
them
… they won’t accept that.’

The old man smiled. ‘They don’t have any choice in the matter.’

‘You’ll die if you stay. Please, you really need to come –’

‘Everyone who remains behind will be dead, Rashim. This …’ He turned to look over his shoulder at the frantic activity going on behind him. ‘For what it is,
this
is our
only
future now.’

‘This is crazy!’

‘You have to go, Rashim. And you have to remain in charge of Exodus.’ He smiled again, an almost paternal smile. Odd that, coming from the elderly Japanese man. Rashim had always got the impression that Dr Yatsushita hadn’t liked him; that he disapproved of his maverick ways, his disorganized virtual workspace, the messy desk, his personalized lab assistant.

‘I trust you, young man;
you
… far more than I trust any of
them.
’

Rashim swallowed anxiously. He could feel his stomach churning and a desperate need for a toilet visit. ‘OK … O-OK. I’ll … uh … I’ll try.’

Dr Yatsushita clapped him on the shoulder. ‘You’ll do fine.’

‘So, Maddy, let me just check I got this wording correct,’ said the guy on the other end of the line. He was just the kind of help-desk type that bugged her: overfamiliar. Way too friendly. It’s not like they were dating or anything, so why’d he have to keep using her name like they’d known each other since kindergarten?

‘
A soul lost in time
… that right, Maddy?’

She sighed. ‘Yes … so far.’

‘
Need to know what you know about Pandora. Aware it is “the end”. Have learned the “family” is just us and you. And we have been used before. Insist on further information. Will not attend any more “parties” until we hear back.
’ She heard the help-desk guy chuckle. ‘Whoa … Maddy, what are you? Some kinda super-secret agent or something?’

‘Yeah … that’s right.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Some kinda super-secret agent. Now you going to print that
AD
for me, or are you just going to carry on making fun of me?’

‘Hey, look, I’m sorry … I’ll … uh, I’ll make sure it gets in tomorrow’s edition.’

‘Thanks. It’s important you do.’

‘So that’s, let me see …’ She heard him counting under his breath. ‘Thirty-four dollars for a week in the classified section of the
Brooklyn Daily
–’

‘No. I want it in just for tomorrow. Just Tuesday.’

‘Doesn’t cost you a cent more to be in the whole week, you know, Maddy.’

‘Just tomorrow’s edition, please. That’s all.’

‘OK … if that’s what you want. Gonna need your card details now, Maddy …’

She ran through them as quickly as she could, keen to get the call and the gratuitous and obligatory
you-have-a-nice-day
over and done with. Finally done, she put the mobile phone down on the desk and looked at the others. ‘So, there we go.’

Liam grinned a little anxiously. ‘Do you think we’ll tick this Waldstein fella off?’

She cocked her head casually. ‘I’m sort of past caring, Liam. Somebody owes us an explanation. We’ve been through Hell and back several times over. We’ve been doing his dirty work pretty much blind. I’m not lifting another finger until we get some information.’

Sal nodded at that. ‘Yeah. It’s not fair. They should trust us now.’

‘It’s
he
… not
they
,’ corrected Maddy.

Sal shrugged that away. ‘Whatever. Whoever. We’re owed an explanation.’

Maddy looked round at the archway. ‘I want to know who precisely set this place up. It couldn’t have just been Waldstein, though. And how long ago? How many teams have been here before us?’ She looked at the others. At Sal. ‘And yeah, maybe you’re right to ask, Sal. Were they really
us
?’

‘What if someone else gets the message?’ said Sal. Maddy hadn’t thought about that. ‘I mean it’ll be out there in a newspaper, right? What if someone else knows to look at that ad?’

‘Then we just made a big mistake.’ Maddy looked at Bob warily. ‘What about you, Bob? Any thoughts you want to share on this?’

‘It is a logical move to seek to acquire more information, Maddy.’

‘You don’t have any secret lines of code, do you? Hmm? Any deeply buried
priority protocols
that would make you object to us questioning our …’ She was going to say ‘HQ’, but she wondered if this agency even had something like that. ‘… questioning our
boss
?’

‘Negative, Maddy. My highest priority is preserving history and protecting you.’

‘You’re not going to suddenly rip our heads off or anything?’

His horse-lips protruded into something close to a sulky pout. ‘I would not hurt any of you.’

Liam punched his arm lightly. ‘Don’t worry, coconut-head, we all love you. So, Maddy?’ He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms defiantly. ‘Is this what I think it is, then?’

‘What’s that?’

‘A workers’ strike.’

She nodded, her mouth set with a determined smile. ‘Too right it is.’ She slurped some of her Dr Pepper from the can. ‘If they … he … Waldstein …
whoever
wants us to save history again, then we better start getting some answers.’

Liam nodded, raising his coffee cup. ‘I’ll drink to that.’

‘Me too,’ said Sal, lifting a glass of fruit juice. She presented it across the table and the other two clinked mug and soda can with her.

Bob nodded thoughtfully. ‘Affirmative.’ He looked around. ‘I have nothing to drink … is that required?’

Rashim took his space on the translation grid, a yard square, as it was for every other personnel slot. Enough of a safety margin to ensure no one became ‘merged’ during the journey. Of course nothing was certain. Rashim knew that better than anyone else standing on the hangar floor. The laws of physics and its predictability had a way of breaking down in extra-dimensional space, or
chaos space
as the enigmatic Roald Waldstein had once named it.

There was no knowing if any of them were going to survive this. Worse still, with his estimates of the total mass being translated – his precious mass index – now being more a thumb-in-the-air approximation than a precise figure, they could quite possibly overshoot or undershoot the receiver station. Or – Jesus … it didn’t bear thinking about – they might never even emerge from extra-dimensional space.

Dr Yatsushita’s voice echoed across over the hangar’s PA system announcing the ten-minute warning.

‘Excuse me … no one’s told me anything about what’s going on.’

Rashim turned to look at a man standing in the floor grid beside him. The floating holographic data block floating above
the ground said he was Professor Elsa Korpinkski: Physicist. Clearly he wasn’t her.

‘Excuse me, sir! You know what’s happening? What’s gonna happen in ten minutes?’

The man was wearing olive fatigues – an army corporal by the chevron on his arm. He was one of the last-minute ‘volunteers’ they’d rounded up as they’d sealed and locked down the facility. Effectively
ballast
, that’s what these last-minute personnel were – equivalent mass for the many empty grid spaces of those candidates who’d failed to make it to the facility in time.

Although Kosong-ni virus blooms had already been spotted in Denver, and a dozen miles further south in Castle Rock – perilously close given the blooms were airborne – they’d hung on until Vice-president Greg Stilson and his wife had arrived by gyrocopter before the facility’s nuclear blast-proof and airtight concrete doors had swung to, sealing off the world outside.

The corporal looked round the hangar floor. ‘What’s all these holo-lines and displays for? This some kind of inoculation for that Korean virus or something? That it? This a cure?’

‘We’re leaving,’ said Rashim.

‘Leaving?’ He wiped sweat off his top lip. ‘What? How? Leaving … what’re you talking about?’

Rashim could see a name on his pocket: North. ‘We’re all going into the past, Corporal North.’

‘The past? What … er … what’s that? You just say
past
?’ He took a step closer to Rashim, an army boot stepping across the line of his grid square. A soft warning chimed across the PA system. The calm, synthetic female voice of the launch computer system. ‘Proximity warning, grid number 327. Please remain inside your location markers.’

‘You need to step back,’ said Rashim, pointing down at his boot. ‘You need to be in your grid.’

North looked down. Did as he was told. ‘Did you just say … the past? Like –?’

‘Yup. Like back-in-time past.’

The man swore. ‘You telling me this … this is some sort of time machine? But that’s … that’s –’

‘A direct violation of international law. Yes, I know.’ Rashim pointed at the glowing holo-projected line hovering an inch above the concrete floor. ‘You should try and remain calm. And at all times, until we have safely
translated
, you must remain within your grid square. Is that clear?’

Corporal North looked at the square of light on the floor around him. ‘Or what?’

‘Or whatever’s hanging over the line isn’t coming with you.’

‘Jesus!’

‘That or it ends up stuck in the middle of the poor guy in the next square. Just stay still.’

‘No one told me nothing. They just grabbed me and a bunch of others out of the compound –’

‘Just stay calm and keep still.’

‘Dr Anwar?’ Yatsushita’s voice boomed across the cavernous interior. ‘Your figures have been entered and the translation simulation program has approved them as being within an acceptable range of error. Are you ready to proceed?’

Rashim very much doubted that. However, the program warning could be over-ridden. He just hoped the warning was a marginal amber, as opposed to a blatant flashing red. He nodded back to him.

Corporal North looked at Rashim. ‘You?
You’re
in charge of all of this?’

‘Uh … yeah. I am, sort of.’

‘Field generator is charging,’ announced the PA system. ‘Translation in eight minutes.’

He looked around at the Exodus group: mostly men, many of them old, a few women and children dotted around; he even saw a newborn baby being placed carefully on the ground. The families of the super-rich. This group should have been three hundred of the world’s brightest minds, young men and women ready to colonize the past and bring with them the best values of the modern world.

On the far side the platoon of combat units stood perfectly still in their own grids. Genetically engineered soldiers: slabs of muscle and bone in army-green, carbon-flex body armour and helmets and carrying enough ordnance between them to wage a small war.

Rashim spotted SpongeBubba waddling over towards him.

‘Hey, skippa!’ he said with a cheerful plastic smile.

‘Bubba, I’m leaving now. You have to get off the translation grid.’

‘I know,’ he replied, grinning chirpily. ‘I just came over to say goodbye. Oh, and you have three more messages in your personal in-box. All bills. The first one is a payment reminder from Intercytex Systems –’