The Doomsday Code

CHAPTER 29

2001, New York

‘Oh my God, yes! Yes, it has! It’s changed!’

Sal stared at the grainy image on the computer screen. Old stone dimpled and worn with age and mottled with olive-green blooms of algae. She could see faint lines inscribing the name Haskette, a gouge in the lettering where at some point in the last eight centuries someone had hacked at the gravestone or perhaps it had been shot at.

At the bottom of Adam’s photograph, where brambles emerged into the image, she could just make out the faintest groove of several lines bisecting. If he’d taken this picture in poorer lighting it might not even have been visible. They’d easily have missed it.

‘That’s definitely it!’ he said. ‘Do you see it?’

Sal nodded. Maddy said nothing.

Sal’s finger traced the shape on the screen. ‘And that’s the coded symbol for an L?’

‘Yes — yes, it is!’ Not for the first time his jaw hung open, dumbfounded. ‘I can’t believe it. I visited the ruins of Kirklees Priory six years ago and took all these graveyard pictures. And these digital images have been sitting on my old hard drive, in my chest … Jesus, I haven’t plugged in this drive for a couple of years — it’s just been collecting dust. And, yet, something’s happened on there! Something changed on my hard drive! That picture’s been altered. That’s … that’s just … well, it’s just messing with my head!’

‘A minute wave,’ said Maddy. ‘That’s what happened. A tiny, tiny time wave. So slight only Sal felt it.’

Of course, Sal really wished she didn’t pick up on the subtle ones; they felt like motion sickness, that sensation of spinning around too much with your eyes closed.

‘And you’re telling me this is a wave that’s been rolling forward through eight hundred and seven years?’

‘Yes, subtly changing this timeline in its wake. Except, of course, everything inside the archway’s preservationfield.’ She could see a look of confusion on his face. ‘That’s why I placed your hard drive outside in the alley. There, it’s outside the energy field, and so it can be altered by a time wave. Do you see?’

He nodded slowly. ‘Right. So … when Sal sensed a … wave thing, that’s why you …?’

Maddy nodded. She’d raced outside with a data cable the moment Sal started wobbling and looking pale, and had quickly downloaded Adam’s graveyard photos again. All the while with him standing in the middle of the archway, open-mouthed and looking utterly bemused.

He nodded his head again, as if that was going to help him get it. Then he leaned forward and studied more closely the image in front of them all. ‘I feel like my head’s going to explode.’ He laughed. ‘This really is the most incredible thing ever!’

‘Of course it is,’ Maddy said coolly. ‘That’s why this — time travel — has to be kept so secret.’

‘But — but think how it could revolutionize history! Historians could visit the times they study; see for themselves how things were and not rely on — ’

‘And with each historian casually joyriding back into the past, the precious history they’d be studying would be altered, mutated, with echoes of change ricocheting back through time, tiny waves affecting tiny decisions causing bigger waves affecting bigger decisions. And all of a sudden in 2001 we’re all speaking, I dunno — Chinese, or we’re all suddenly dinosaur lizard-men, or there’s no New York any more and it’s just radioactive ruins! All because somebody decided it would be a coolthing to go back in time and see a bit of history for themselves!’

Sal looked at Maddy. Her cheeks were mottled pink with anger, or embarrassment.

Jahulla, what’s up with her?

‘Sorry,’ said Adam meekly. ‘I was just saying.’

Maddy turned to look at him. ‘That’s why we’re here, Adam. Stuck in this archway. Stuck in these same two freakin’ days, watching the same things over and over! We’re here because there are morons in the future. Idiots! Crazies! Power-hungry lunatics who think time travel’s just a game! A neat idea! We’re stuck here watching history … and I’ve got no idea how long we’re gonna be here — me, Sal and Liam.’ She looked at Sal. ‘Forever?’

Sal shrugged. ‘I hope not.’

Maddy’s outburst left a long silence filled only by the hum of computer fans and soft purring motors of the growth tubes in the back room.

‘You OK?’ asked Sal.

Maddy chewed her lip in silence for a while. Then eventually nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she sighed. ‘I’m OK.’

‘Sorry,’ said Adam. ‘It’s just all so new and exciting to me.’

Maddy shook her head. ‘No, I’m sorry. I … I was rude. I didn’t mean to crank off at you. It just sort of gets to you — this. Knowing about all this. I’m tired.’

Sal decided to lift the mood. ‘Well, the good thing is they found the right gravestone. Right?’

Maddy nodded. ‘Right.’

‘We’ll know what they’re up to this time,’ she added.