Day of the Predator

CHAPTER 25

2001, New York

Sal spun round in the chair at the sound of the roller shutter rattling up. ‘Maddy?’

Maddy ducked beneath and into the archway. ‘Yeah, it’s me,’ she replied, in a dull, lifeless voice.

‘I thought you’d left us. Maybe gone for good.’

Maddy’s face creased with a tired smile as she crossed the floor. ‘It did cross my mind.’

‘You shouldn’t blame yourself. But look — ’

‘Don’t, please.’ Maddy raised a hand to hush her. She slumped down in a swivel chair beside Sal. ‘I screwed up. I was hasty and impatient and killed Liam in the process. I’ve got to find my own way of dealing with that. And it’s not going to help you trying to tell me that I shouldn’t be beating myself up over it.’ She buried her face in her hands, pushing up her glasses and rubbing tired eyes.

‘No, listen to me,’ replied Sal, sitting forward. ‘Bob says he might not be dead.’

Maddy peered through her fingers.

‘In fact, Bob’s been analysing the tachyon signature around the window we opened. He’s almost certain that we caused a portal, not an explosion.’

The screen in front of them flickered to life.

› Sal is correct. An 87 % probability of a random portal.

Sal reached out for her arm. ‘He’s alive, Maddy. Do you see? Alive.’ She made a face. ‘Probably.’

Slowly Maddy lowered her hands from her face. ‘Oh my God. You serious?’

‘Yeah.’

Maddy turned towards the screen. ‘Bob? You’re sure of this?’

› 87 % probability. The decay signature of the particles while our window was open was very similar in structure to the decay of a closing window.

‘Can you work out where we sent him?’

› Where is likely to be nowhere. He was unlikely to have been geographically repositioned.

‘When, then? When?’

› Negative. I have no data.

The momentary look of hope on Maddy’s face quickly slipped away. ‘So we’ve blasted him into history and we’ve no idea when?’

› Affirmative.

She looked at Sal. ‘And what? I’m supposed to feel better about this? This is supposed to be good news?’

‘He’s alive, Maddy. That’s something.’

‘He’s lost. Lost for good. Might as well be dead. But don’t you see… it’s worse than that. If he and the other support unit, and god knows how many other people, have been blasted back into history, we’ve really messed up. That’s a whole load of contamination right there.’

‘So? We’ve been here before. We’ve fixed time before. In fact… look, if they cause a whole load of contamination, that’s a good thing. Right, Bob? That means we’ve got a chance to — ’

› Negative. Contamination is to be avoided.

‘But if they change things and we get time waves here in 2001 it’ll give us some sort of clue where they are.’

› Affirmative.

‘See? We can find them. It’s possible. For example, if Liam’s any time in the last century he could make his way to New York and use the guest book again.’

Maddy shook her head. ‘Maybe, maybe. But… they could be any time. Any time, Sal. I mean, not just a year ago, or a hundred. But maybe a thousand, ten thousand… a million. God, if he’s just five hundred years back, what document could he scribble in then? There wasn’t a written language here in America in those days. It was just Indians and wilderness.’

Sal shrugged.

‘And if he’s like thousands of years back…’ She turned to look at the screen. ‘That’s possible, right?’

› Affirmative. Provided there is enough energy invested in a portal there is no limit to how far back in time a subject can be sent.

‘If he’s gone back thousands of years, Sal, any attempt to contact us could totally change history. I mean really mess things up. Just look at what happened when those neo-Nazis went back to 1941. They turned the present into a nuclear wasteland!’

‘I’m just saying…’

‘Saying? Saying what? We’re totally messed up here! God… there could already be a freaking time wave on the way! And then what? New York vanishes? More zombies?’

Sal reached for her arm again. ‘Maddy… please! You’ve got to stay calm. We need you calm. You’re the strategist. You can figure this out. I know you can.’

Maddy shook her head. ‘Uhh,’ she muttered. ‘Foster’d figure it out. But me?’

He’d know exactly what to do. In fact, if the old man had been here, he would have been smart enough not to have caused this problem in the first place.

But he’s out there, right? He’s out there somewhere in New York. What about the Starbucks? That was a Monday morning at about nine. If I went there tomorrow morning…

She quickly realized that wouldn’t work. Foster was gone. He wasn’t back in the arch when the field office bubble reset. Foster was gone from their forty-eight-hour world.

Gone from Monday and Tuesday. Maddy’s jaw suddenly dropped open. What about Wednesday?

Sal was looking at her. ‘Maddy? You OK?’

But where would he be on Wednesday, September twelfth? She tried to remember their last conversation in the coffee shop. She’d asked him where he’d go, what he planned to do with the time he had left to live. He’d said he’d always wanted to visit New York, to see the sights. Just like a tourist. Maddy herself had been to New York so many times before her ‘death’, that she no longer thought like a tourist, no longer mentally checked off the places one had to go see.

‘Sal, what places would you visit in New York, if this was like a holiday trip?’

‘Uh?’

‘If you were a tourist? What would you most want to go see?’

‘Why are you — ?’

‘Just tell me!’

She scowled in thought for a moment. ‘Well, I suppose the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the Museum of Natural History. Maddy, why? What’re you thinking?’

Maddy nodded. Yes. The Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty. She could try those first.

‘Maddy?’

She looked up at Sal. ‘I’m going to go find Foster. Bring him back if I can. He’ll know what to do, Sal. Because I sure don’t.’

‘But he’s gone for good you said. He wasn’t here when the bubble reset. He’s gone.’

‘Gone from our two days, yeah. But not Wednesday… not Thursday, not any other day after that.’

‘You’re going to ride forward?’

Maddy considered that, but the less time travel she did — forward or backwards — the better. Foster had quietly told her timeriding was a bit like smoking; like a single cigarette, it was impossible to say for sure how much a single smoke might take off your life, but if you could ever avoid having a cigarette that could only be a good thing.

‘I’ll miss the reset. That’s what I’ll do,’ said Maddy. ‘I’ll go into Wednesday and hang around those places. Who knows? I might get lucky.’

‘You can’t do that! You’ll be gone for good like Foster!’

‘No… we’ll schedule a return window.’ Maddy pinched her lip in thought. ‘Yeah, we’ll schedule a window at, let’s say, eight in the evening on Wednesday.’ She turned round and pointed towards the shutter door. ‘Just outside the archway in our side street. That’ll bring me right back into our time bubble, back into Monday.’

‘But what if a time wave happens while you’re gone?’

Maddy shrugged, resigned. ‘I can’t see you coping any worse than Maddy “Mess-up” Carter’s done so far, right?’

‘Oh shadd-yah! We should be figuring out how to get Liam back, not messing around visiting tourist attractions.’

‘Yeah? But think about it — there’s nothing we can do, is there? Just wait around… wait for a time wave to hit us and hope it’ll lead us directly to him? That’s it. That’s pretty much all we can do right now. Just wait. Well, at least while we’re sitting around here doing nothing useful I can try and find Foster, see what else he can suggest.’

Sal clamped her mouth shut.

‘Make sense?’

Sal nodded slowly. ‘OK,’ she replied, fiddling with a pair of plastic bangles on her wrist. ‘Do you want me to come with you? Two pairs of eyes?’

The screen in front of them flickered.

› Recommendation: Sal should remain here as the observer.

Maddy nodded reluctantly. ‘Bob’s right. If we get a time ripple preceding a wave, we need you here as our early heads-up. You should stay here and do your mid-morning walk around Times Square just like always. And, anyway, if the poop hits the fan and for some reason I end up being stuck out in Wednesday it’ll be good to know there’s someone left holding the fort, right?’

Sal tried a confident nod. ‘Uh… yeah.’

‘Right… that’s the plan, then.’ Maddy looked at her watch. It was just gone five in the afternoon. Outside, the sun would be looking ahead for a place to settle beyond the smoke-filled sky of Manhattan, and most of New York was already back at home, the normal day of work abandoned hours ago as they silently watched live news feeds from their dinner tables.

Tonight, New York was going to be a ghost town, just like it always was on the Tuesday as the clock ticked down towards their field office time bubble resetting itself.