The Doomsday Code

CHAPTER 70

2001, New York

Sal looked at them both. ‘Jahulla! That was one,’ she said. ‘Another one. Did you feel it?’ The other two looked at each other. Maddy quickly got up from the table and went over towards the bank of computer monitors.

She sat down at the desk and downloaded the image again from the still-connected drive outside. As it flickered open on the screen, Sal leaned over and traced a finger along the faint new lines on the photograph. ‘There’s another message on your gravestone.’

Adam scribbled down the pigpen glyphs on to a pad of paper.

The girls watched him impatiently as he checked each symbol against the table he’d drawn up on the page of writing paper earlier. ‘Well?’

‘Just hang on!’ His eyes narrowed as he double-checked some of the symbols on the new row that had appeared on his photograph. There were faint lines there, lines that might not have been part of the original carving, and lines lost to nearly a millennium of weathering. He looked down at the page of letters he’d deciphered and realized there were mistakes in there.

‘First word is extraction,’ said Sal.

Maddy nodded. ‘The rest is a time-stamp. Twelve numbers, the first four a time, the last eight a date.’

Sal grabbed a pen and quickly scribbled the nearly-words as numbers: 0445 13061194.

Maddy checked her numbers against what Adam had decoded. ‘Yes … yes, OK. Quarter to five in the morning, 13th June 1194. Right?’ She looked at the webcam. ‘You get that, Bob?’

› Affirmative. I have been listening. Date stamp: 04:45, 13 June 1194.

‘There’re no geo-coordinates, though,’ said Maddy.

‘Same coordinates as last time, then,’ said Sal.

Maddy tapped a pen against her lips. ‘Yeah. You get that, Bob?’

› Affirmative. Same geo-placement coordinates.

She leaned back in her chair and glanced round Adam at the rack of equipment beside the empty perspex tube. The charge display showed a full line of green LEDs. ‘All right, we’ve got enough juice on the board to open it up, Bob.’

› Affirmative. Activating density probe.

1194, Kirklees Priory, Yorkshire

Cabot looked around the field. Although the sun had yet to climb into view, the peach-stained sky was light now, a sky that would soon be a deep blue and cloudless — another hot summer’s day.

‘Why, pray, are we standing in this field?’

Becks raised a finger. ‘Just a moment.’

Cabot looked around at the softly stirring ears of barley. They rustled and whispered among themselves as they waited in silence for … for what? Lady Rebecca had said ‘the future’.

Days yet to be.

To visit one of those … it was a concept he could barely get his mind around. A day simply is. And then after the day has ended, it merely was, complete with whatever one remembered of the day in question. To walk into what was yet to be …

He shook his head at the impossibility of it. Perhaps this lady and her friends were afflicted by some madness. He’d come across holy men in Jerusalem who made claim of things just as impossible and nonsensical as this.

‘My lady, perhaps it would be best if we return to the grounds of the priory?’

She shook her head. ‘I am detecting tachyons, Cabot. It appears the message has already been received.’

Tack-ee-ons? Another one of their strange words that he could only ponder the meaning of. He looked around the field, not sure what a tack-ee-on was, or what he should do if one were to approach him.

A fresh breeze stirred the barley, sending a gentle wave across the ears of grain.

‘The portal is coming,’ said Becks.

Cabot’s gaze flitted from one direction to the next. All he could see was the field they were standing in, the edge of the nearby woods and a thin smudge of smoke rising from the priory just over the brow of the hillside. Then all of a sudden he felt a strong buffeting wind, cool against his cheek.

A dozen yards ahead, above the chest-high sea of swaying barley, he could just make out the outline of a shimmering, undulating dome. Within it, he saw swirling dark details that flickered and twisted like the reflection in a disturbed pool of water. ‘What devilry is this!’ his voice croaked hoarsely.

‘It is a time portal,’ said Becks matter-of-factly. She started towards it. ‘Follow me, please.’

But Cabot remained rooted to the spot. Suddenly terrified of this thing that had no place being here in their field. He saw darkness in the middle of it, shapes he couldn’t understand, demon-like shapes that seemed to be waving malevolently to him, beckoning him on.

This can be of no good, he cautioned himself. He glanced at Lady Rebecca and for a moment wondered if his more devout brothers in the priory had been right all along, that there were demons and devils and a dark place beneath the earth they stood on whither tainted souls were taken down and doomed to burn in torment for an eternity.

Becks turned and saw he hadn’t yet moved. ‘Now!’ she barked at him.

Cabot shook his head. ‘’Tis … ’tis an evil work!’

She pushed her way impatiently through the stalks and grabbed his arm roughly. ‘We are wasting time. The portal can only remain open for a limited period on one charge.’

‘No!’ He tried to wriggle free of her grasp. ‘No! Please!’ But her hand had closed around his lower arm like a vice. She began to wrestle him forward towards the churning darkness.

‘Oh, Lord forgive my sins!’ Cabot began to bellow, trying his best to dig his heels into the soft dry soil. ‘I renounce all evil! I renounce the Devil and his minions!’

Cabot threw a punch at her face. It landed firmly on her cheek, leaving a graze and a welt that was sure to turn into a dark purple bruise within the hour. Her eyebrows knitted disapprovingly.

‘Please do not do that again.’ With both hands she grasped his monk’s habit and lifted him up off the ground. His arms and legs began to flail frantically.

‘Ye are a demon!’ he screamed down at her face. His feet in sandals kicking her stomach, her thighs. ‘I knew it!’

She staggered forward, just about managing to keep her balance as he squirmed, kicked and punched in her grasp.

‘No! Please!Have mercy on — !’