Time Riders

CHAPTER 62

2001, New York

‘The shorter the message we try to send, the less energy we’lluse,’ said Foster. ‘We need to keep it precise and to the point. That way we canspend more of the energy of the tachyon burst on creating a wider spread ofparticles.’

Sal pulled a face. ‘I still don’t get it.’

Foster scratched a chin thick with several days of white and grey bristles. The first thinghe planned to do once things had returned to normal was to get a nice clean wet shave.

The idea of beams of sub-atomic particles that could be fired backwards through time had beena hard concept for him to get his head round back when he’d first been recruited as aTimeRider. In fact, a lot of the concepts, the technology, the gadgets had been alien to him.His young mind had struggled hard to absorb it all. But he’d managed.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s like this. What we’re doing, in effect,is spraying an area of America in the past, fifty years ago, with a shower of tiny particles- these tachyons. Now, if we knew precisely where Bob was standing at a certain time, then we could aim ourtransmitter right at that point and fire off a message using very little energy, needing tosend only a small number of these tachyon particles. However, we don’t know where Bob isright now. We just have a general direction.’

‘But why don’t we aim the beam to the location and the point intime that we sent them back to? You know… the White House front lawn, say… thirtyseconds after they’d arrived there. They won’t havebeen able to wander too far in, like, half a minute,’ said Maddy.

‘True,’ said Foster, ‘but then they won’t have had time to gather anyuseful intelligence in just thirty seconds. We’d be right back where we started, nonethe wiser and with no information to work from.’

He looked across at the machine beside the perspex tube. The winking row of red lights showedthe displacement machinery was still a long way off from being charged up enough to use.

‘Look, I’ll be honest. I really don’t know yet whether we’re evengoing to be able to get one of them back, let alone both of them. The point is — and this is really important- we have to hope they’ve found out enough in the past to be able to tell us exactly when and where this wrong history diverged from our own.Because,’ he said, looking up at both of them with a stern expression, ‘we mayonly have enough power left to get one shot at sending someoneback. One last shot.’

He sipped from his mug.

‘Just one shot to put things right.’

‘Right,’ said Maddy quietly.

‘So, we know they missed the return window, and the back-up window an hour later…and the last back-up twenty-four hours later. Which means they must have run into trouble. Butthat’s not necessarily such a bad thing.’

Sal made a face. ‘It’s not?’

‘No. From my many years’ experience as an operative, running into trouble isinevitably how you end up learning things.’ Foster smiled. ‘The more troublethey’ve been in, the more they’ve probably learned about the world in1956.’

‘If they’re still alive, that is,’ added Maddy.

‘Liam is a very resourceful young lad. He’s a quick learner.And the support unit with him, well… they’re very tough things. Takes quite a lotof effort to kill one of those. Between them, I’m sure they will have managed a way tolie low, to gather information and await a message from us.’

‘So then… what message are we going to sendthem?’ asked Sal.

Foster looked at her. ‘We send them a time-stamp: a location and moment in time forthem to make their way to.’

‘Right.’

‘We can assume they have remained in the area of Washington.’

‘You sure?’ cut in Maddy. ‘Can we assume that?’

‘Yes, because it makes sense. Bob will assume we’ll pick them up from roughly thesame area. So he’ll have kept as close to the White House as is safe to do.’

‘We’re doing a lot of guessing here,’ said Maddy, a note of scepticism inher voice.

‘Guessing is all we’ve got, I’m afraid.’

Neither girl looked too happy with that.

‘Look, here’s the plan,’ he said. ‘We’re going to turn on thecomputer system, pull up a street map for Washington and try to find some quiet backstreet nottoo far from the White House… say within a mile or two. That’ll be where we’ll open the return window. We’ll write down theco-ordinates, turn the computers back off since they’re drawing power from the generatorand we’ll have what we want.’

‘OK.’

‘So the other part of the message is the when. That’sthe part of this we’ve got to guess right.’

‘How about the day after the twenty-four-hourback-up?’ suggested Sal.

‘Could do… but if they failed that, then something must haveprevented them getting there. I’d say we need to give them more time.’

‘Something prevented them?’

Foster shrugged. ‘Many things. Bob or Liam might have been wounded, incapacitatedsomehow… unable to move. They might have been arrested. The area might have been sealedoff or hazardous.’

‘So, how long after that, then?’ asked Sal. ‘Two days? Threedays?’

His lips tightened. ‘As long as we possibly can. We don’t know what theirsituation is, how much planning or recovering they might need to get to thislocation.’

‘How much time are we talking about?’ asked Maddy. ‘A week?’

‘The maximum mission time possible. Six months,’ he replied.

Maddy pulled off her glasses and absent-mindedly wiped the lenses. She narrowed her eyes.‘Maximum mission time? You mentioned that once before.’

‘Maximum mission time,’ repeated Foster. ‘Twenty-six weeks. Six months.That’s the support unit’s expiry point.’

‘Expiry point?’ said Maddy. ‘I don’t like the sound ofthat.’

‘The support unit, Bob, is programmed to destroy himself if he’s not beenreturned to the present after a period of six months.’

‘Why?’ asked Sal.

‘To prevent him falling into the wrong hands… to prevent him becoming a dangerousweapon.’

‘Dangerous?’

‘His mind is adaptive AI. It’s software that learns. Imagine if Bob fell into thewrong hands. Imagine if Bob’s software began to learn about the world from someone evil,or mad. Imagine if Bob learned about the world from someone utterly insane like the Roman Emperor Caligula. Or was used as a weapon by Napoleon, or GenghisKhan.’

The girls considered that prospect in silence.

‘Worse still,’ Foster continued, ‘since his organic body doesn’t age,and provided he’s able to eat, he could live indefinitely. A strong man, almostimpossible to kill, who never ages. Think about it. Something like that could end up — particularly back in a superstitious time — being worshipped as a… well, as agod.’

‘Sheesh,’ whispered Maddy, ‘I bet ol’ dumb-nuts would lovethat.’

‘Point is that it’s a particularly bad idea leaving a support unit behind inhistory. So they’re programmed to self-terminate after six months.’

Sal frowned. ‘So what will Bob do? Blow up?’

‘Nothing quite so dramatic. The computer brain short-circuits and burns itself out.You’re left with nothing but a nugget of metal that’s useful to no one.’

‘And the computer burning itself,’ said Maddy, finishing off her coffee,‘that, like, that’ll kill Bob?’

‘Not exactly. With no computer in his head, the support unit will be nothing more thana large, able-bodied adult male with the undeveloped mind of a newborn baby.’

‘He’s left a gibbering idiot for the rest of time,’ said Maddy.‘Nice.’

‘No. He’d most probably die eventually. Being unable to actually think, he’d be unable to care for himself, feed himself. Thebody would die of starvation after a few weeks, just like any other human body. In fact,unable to figure out he needs a drink, he’d die within just a few days.’

‘Poor Bob,’ said Sal.

Foster leaned forward and rested a hand on her shoulder. ‘Meat robot… OK?That’s all he is. Just a meat robot.’

She nodded slowly. ‘Meat robot,’ she repeated to herself,‘meat robot.’

‘So,’ said Maddy, putting her glasses back on, ‘that’s the time-stampwe’re gonna send back to them? That they gotta shift their butts to somewhere in theneighbourhood of the White House for a portal that opens six months after they first arrivedthere?’

‘Maybe a couple or more days before the termination date. Just so we’re notcutting it too fine. But yes,’ he replied. ‘I think that’s our bestshot.’

‘Right.’ Maddy nodded towards the computer monitors. ‘I guess I better bootup the computer, see if the thing still works an’ rustle up a map ofWashington.’

‘Good girl.’