Time Riders: The Doomsday Code (45 page)

From behind Liam women also emerged from the market square with buckets and hides full of water, which the fighting men eagerly sipped and poured over their heads.

Of course it made sense to him. He realized how desperately hot he was under the leather and mail and, of course, he’d only fought briefly. Water, and an agreed break in the hostilities during which it could be distributed, was as much a part of the twelfth-century battlefield as anything else.

‘Bob,’ he said, rapping his knuckles on his back, ‘there’s water, you should get some while you can.’

Bob turned round. For the first time Liam saw the front of the shield strapped to the stump of his left arm. ‘Jay-zus, Bob – you seen that?’ The shield bristled arrows like a hairbrush. The enemy archers had been deliberately targeting him.

Several other arrows protruded from the front of his chest.

‘Oh boy … you need to get some of this seen to.’

‘The damage at this stage is acceptable, Liam,’ grunted Bob. ‘I am still at fifty-five per cent functioning capacity.’ His fat lips spread. ‘But you are correct … I could do with some water.’

Along with the other men, they took their turn scooping cooling handfuls of water out of the buckets being passed up to them, and it was as Bob was glugging water like a thirsty dog after a long walk that Liam heard a muted cheer rippling through the crowd gathered in the market square.

He saw bodies part respectfully and then finally, stepping on to the bottom of the mound of broken masonry, he recognized John, in heavy mail, holding a shield bearing the royal crest.

‘Sire!’ he called out.

John slowly picked his way up towards him. ‘Sheriff,’ he finally replied, winded from the exertion. He gathered his breath before speaking again. ‘’Tis hard enough walking in this, let alone climbing.’

The men of the garrison standing nearby, respectfully dropped to their knees.

‘Oh, stop that!’ barked John with his best go at heroic bravado. ‘Save what you have left for the fighting, men.’

‘Sire,’ said Liam, ‘you’ll be a target, so you will.’

He could see how pale John looked, trembling inside his mail.

‘Then,’ said John, running a tongue along his dry lips, ‘then I shall just have to keep moving, won’t I?’

A distant horn sounded again and Liam saw the women and children moving among Richard’s men scramble at double speed away from the front line towards the tents and marquees on the hillside in front of them. Almost immediately the flitting of dark arrows resumed, peppering the clear sky, and the men fifty yards away reformed their lines in preparation for the renewed assault on Nottingham.

Maddy and Adam stared at the monitor while Sal helped Becks and Cabot ready themselves for transport back to 1194.

‘What do you mean, you can’t use Becks’s time-stamp?’ asked Maddy.

> There appears to me too much instability to lock on to a reliable window.

‘What does that mean?’

> Reality is fluctuating unreliably between two preferred states.

‘It can’t make its mind up,’ said Adam.

> That is a fair analogy.

‘Well … what? Do we wait? Do we risk it?’

> We can risk sending them back using Becks’s time-stamp, but I cannot anticipate the result of that.

Maddy balled her fist on the desk. ‘OK, then … Well, how big is this instability?’

> Please restate the question.

‘How … far, how much time is affected by it? What I mean is … is it regionalized? Like a storm or something?’

> The fluctuating timelines appear to branch from between seven and nine hours before Becks’s return time-stamp.

Maddy turned round towards the water tube. Becks was just about to climb the stepladder to get into the water.

‘Becks! What happened seven hours before you left 1194?’

Becks stopped, consulted her memory. ‘Precisely seven hours? I was walking along a stone passage.’

Maddy flapped her hands impatiently. ‘Or thereabouts. Anything
significant
?’

‘Six hours and forty-three minutes prior to the time-stamp, I scaled the outer wall of the city of Nottingham.’

‘Go back a bit.’

Becks tilted her head. ‘Seven hours and three minutes prior to the time-stamp, I was saying to Liam and Bob that “I would be fine”.’

‘Oh come on! Go back more. Something
significant
!’

Becks spooled memories silently for a moment, then finally her eyes locked on Maddy’s. ‘At eight hours and fifty-six minutes prior to the time-stamp, I was speaking with John.’

‘What the hell did you say to him?
Exactly!
’

Her eyelids fluttered. ‘… A man must find at least one moment in time to make a stand for himself … or live a life – burning in the flames of regret.’

Maddy looked to Adam.

He shrugged. ‘It’s very poetic.’

> Checking quotation database. Just a moment …

She turned back to Becks. ‘You think that’s, like, changed history somehow?’

‘I believe it may have
inspired
him,’ Becks replied. ‘John was considering immediate surrender to his brother. However, correct history shows he held out for five days. I decided he needed …
encouragement
.’

Maddy sighed. ‘Well guess what? Looks like it worked.’

> Quotation source: Rock band – EssZed. Lyrics to song.

‘Yuh, thanks, Bob. So –’ she turned back to Becks – ‘you think maybe saying that quote to –’

‘I also offered myself to him.’

Sal’s jaw dropped. ‘You mean …?’

Becks looked down at her. ‘Marriage.’

‘If he … what? Showed you he was a big tough man?’ said Maddy. ‘If he stood up to his brother?’

‘Affirmative.’

Maddy shook her head. ‘Oh well, looks like you really
encouraged
him all right.’ She turned back to the monitor. ‘Bob … what competing histories are we getting out of this?’

> No information. The fluctuation is too rapid to generate timelines.

‘That’s why we’re not getting time waves?’ said Adam.

> Correct. However, this oscillating status is unstable and dangerous.

‘Dangerous?’ Maddy pushed up her glasses. ‘What’s that mean exactly?’

> It is a stress factor on the reality wall.

Adam looked at her. ‘The reality wall?’

‘What separates us from chaos space,’ she replied quickly. ‘Bob … then what are we supposed to do?’

> The instability may settle itself. Or it may increase in severity.

‘And if it does do that – if it gets worse?’

> No information.

‘
No information?
’ she howled, exasperated. ‘Well … But look, it’s not a good thing, right?’

> Not a good thing. There are several essays on chaos space written by R. Waldstein and E. Chan in my database.

‘Can you sum them up?’

> Chaos space is a dimension where the laws of quantum physics are contradicted. Theoretically, the effect on normal dimensions would be their complete destruction.

‘What does that mean? Like, all of Earth … destroyed?’

> Negative. Everything.

‘Ev– everything?’

> The entire universe.

Maddy suddenly felt light-headed and short of breath. ‘Oh crud. Oh my God! We’ve … we’ve really messed up.’ Her hands scrambled across the clutter on the desk for her inhaler. ‘We’ve –’

‘Maddy.’ Adam put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Maddy, come on, calm … don’t lose it.’

She found the inhaler and pulled hard on it several times. She doubled over on her seat, her head between her knees, the wheezing rasp of her contracting throat sounding like a blacksmith’s bellows.

Sal was over beside her, an arm across her shoulders. ‘Maddy? You OK?’

She shook her head. ‘Second …’ she wheezed. ‘Gimme … a … second …’

Adam looked down at her. ‘This is all going wrong, isn’t it? This organization of yours, it’s –’

‘
We’re still learning
,’ Sal snapped defensively. ‘We’ve been in worse situations.’ She bent down and stroked the hair out of Maddy’s face. ‘Right, Maddy? We’ve got out of worse things?’

Maddy pulled again on her inhaler, then lifted her face. ‘Yuh …’ Still wheezing. ‘Yeah,’ she said again. ‘Bob?’

> Yes, Maddy.

‘Becks and Cabot
have
to go back with the Grail, like
right now
! Find us the best window you can – as close to the castle as you can.’

> Affirmative. Searching.

‘But it’s unstable, isn’t it?’ said Adam. ‘Your computer was saying there’s a risk of sending them –’

‘There’s always a freakin’ risk,’ Maddy uttered wearily. She pulled herself up off her elbows and faced the desk again. ‘Bob? Come on … give me something!’

> Just a moment … Searching.

She checked their displacement machine had charge enough. It looked good. She turned to Sal. ‘Get them in the water, Sal. Go get them ready!’

Sal nodded and rushed over to the perspex tube.

‘If it’s unstable, what could happen to them?’ asked Adam.

‘They could end up turned inside out and looking like a bowl of lasagne,’ she replied.

‘Oh, I wish I hadn’t asked.’

‘Or worse.’

Adam pulled a face. ‘Worse! How could you get worse than that?’

She lowered her voice. ‘They could end up stuck in chaos.’ She turned to look at him. ‘Tell me, do you believe in Hell?’

He shook his head. ‘You kidding? I – no … of course not. It’s an invention of the Catholic Church. Just a load of old religious mumbo-jumbo.’

‘That’s what I used to think. But, you know … I wonder. Is it?’

The dark dialogue box on the screen in front of them suddenly flickered with the movement of computer-Bob’s cursor.

> I have a candidate time-stamp that is currently holding a solid state.

‘How long will it last?’

> There is no information how long it will last. Perhaps only seconds.

‘Activate a ten-second countdown. NOW!’

> Affirmative.

She turned to see Becks
splosh
into the water, the Grail once more in its box, the box sealed in a plastic Ziploc bag. Cabot was standing at the top of the stepladder and regarding the chilled water at his toes. ‘But, please, young lady … why do we have to get into …?’

‘JUST GET HIM IN!’ shouted Maddy above the growing hum of energy building up for a release.

Sal climbed up the steps of the ladder. ‘Mr Cabot, you have to get in the water … please!’

She spun round to see the countdown on the screen.

Four … three … two …

‘PUSH HIM IN!’

Sal nodded and threw her weight behind a hard shove against the monk’s thighs. He teetered for a moment, arms cartwheeling for balance, before he toppled forward into the tube, sending a small tidal wave of water splashing over the side and on to the floor. The stepladder wobbled under Sal’s sudden lurching movement and tipped back against the brick wall, the legs sliding along the concrete floor, dumping her on to a storage shelf full of cables and toolboxes that cascaded down and clattered along with her to the ground just as the displacement machine discharged its energy. The perspex tube flexed violently and thudded with a boom as the water, Cabot and Becks vanished back into the twelfth century.

As Sal rolled on the floor among spools of cable and yelping from a sprained wrist, and the echo of the flexing boom bounced around their archway, slowly fading, Maddy could only wonder how it was that mankind – perhaps even the whole universe – had ended up resting its fate in the hands of an amateur little outfit like theirs.

They landed within the keep’s outer bailey, the splash of thirty gallons of water echoing off the tall stone walls. Cabot landed heavily on his side, grunting at the impact on hard cobblestone. Becks landed on her feet, poised and ready for action.

The keep itself was devoid of any activity. A pair of soldiers manning the gatehouse emerged from the cool shadow of the archway to find out what the noise was all about. They gazed in bemusement at the old monk and the woman in the leather corset and dark woollen tights.

‘Where is the Earl of Cornwall?’

‘Not ’ere, love, e’s fightin’,’ one of them answered, and then suddenly it occurred to him they might not have his best interests in mind. ‘’Ere! Ye be spies?’ he barked at them. ‘Ye stop roight there!’

Becks calmly handed Cabot the box as he got to his feet and approached the soldiers open-handed and with the most alluring smile she could conjure up.

‘Let me explain,’ she started to say.

Ten seconds later, both men were on their backs, one of them out cold, the other with a broken wrist. Becks tossed Cabot one of their swords as they jogged out of the keep through the open gatehouse, crossing the bridge over the river and following the main dry-rutted track through the centre of Nottingham towards the marketplace, towards the noise of a raging battle in progress.

The marketplace was filled with the squirming, howling wounded: men and boys missing limbs, heads and faces split open, puckered and purple wounds that were clearly mortal. Children with water and bloodstained rags moved among them providing what comfort they could, ignoring the occasional arrows that dropped down into the square and clattered on stone slabs or thudded and embedded themselves into the earth.