Time Riders: The Doomsday Code (6 page)

Sal huffed. ‘Why do
you
always get to decide everything now?’

‘I’m sorry, it’s …’ Maddy sighed. ‘Foster made me leader, Sal. So I’m supposed to
lead
. That’s the way it is. I wish it wasn’t. I wish somebody else was calling the shots. I wish Foster was still here, to be honest. But it is what it is.’

‘Just seems unfair.’

‘All of this is
unfair
! I didn’t want to come here. I didn’t choose to die in a plane crash at eighteen. I had plans, you know? I had plans to do more with my life than watch a bunch of computer screens and live in this cruddy dump.’ She could have said more. Things she’d regret later. It was bad enough having to be in charge when she barely felt she had a grasp on how things worked. But, add to that, somebody somewhere seemed to be trying to warn her about something and she was way too stupid to get it.

The moment tasted sour and all of a sudden she felt tired. She looked at her watch: it was gone two in the morning. ‘Look, I’m hitting the mattress. Maybe we all should. It’s late and we’ve got stuff to do tomorrow.’

She got up and headed into the arched recess where their bunks were and pulled a curtain across as she changed into her PJs.

Liam looked at Sal and shrugged, both of them perplexed at her mood. ‘Maybe she’s missing home?’

‘Aren’t we all?’ said Sal.

Maddy and Becks were treading water in the perspex tube one moment and gone – along with sixty gallons of diluted disinfectant solution – the next. The large plastic tub flexed inwards with a loud thud that echoed through the archway.

‘Jay-zus! Does that tube always do that?’

Sal nodded. ‘The pressure of all the water suddenly not there … it makes the perspex flex.’

‘Oh, right.’ He looked round at Sal sitting patiently beside him, hands crossed in her lap. ‘So what normally happens now?’

Her smile was resigned. ‘We haven’t had “normal” yet. Either we’ve been hiding from cannibal mutants or we’ve had secret-service agents knocking at the door.’ She laughed skittishly. ‘It seems like we’ve been hopping from one crisis to the next since we first arrived here, doesn’t it?’

Liam nodded. ‘Well then, while it appears the sky hasn’t yet fallen on our heads again, and while we’re waiting for this machinery to recharge, perhaps Miss Vikram would like to go for a breakfast in one of those charming Scottish restaurants.’

‘Scottish restaurants?’

‘One of them McDougal places?’

‘McDonalds?’

‘Aye, that’s the fella. The ones with the big fancy yellow M.’

She pulled a face. ‘Breakfast sounds good … but maybe somewhere else?’

Opening the portal in the university’s swimming pool after closing time had seemed a good idea to Maddy back in the archway. They’d arrive wet, but there’d be changing facilities, and hopefully a blow-dryer or towel or something. But now, floundering beneath the water in total darkness, not knowing which way was up and which way was down, she realized it ranked pretty high on her own Not To Be Tried Again list.

Suddenly Maddy felt Becks’s hand grasping her, followed by a hearty yank and her face breaking the surface. She coughed, retched and spluttered as Becks swam to the side of the pool, pulling her after.

‘Recommendation: this was not a good idea.’

‘No, really?’ she gasped.

Becks nodded firmly, not yet a master of irony. ‘Yes, you could have drowned.’

Maddy eased herself out of the cold water and flopped exhausted on to the side. She looked around. The university’s sports centre was closed now, the swimming pool dark, lit only by the dim amber glow of street lights outside, strips of orange light leaking through the drawn and turned-down blinds along the racing-lane side of the pool.

‘All right, well … so we’re here now. We’ve got four hours. So let’s get dry and changed. And then we’ll go find this Adam Lewis.’

Adam’s nerves were getting the better of him. He needed to get a grip.

‘Get a grip,’ he uttered to the face in his mirror. A lean face of freckles and acne, framed by the pitifully feeble sprouting of an auburn beard. Auburn – not ginger. Auburn. That’s what he kept telling everyone. And the tatty twists and turns of greasy hair tied back in a ponytail, they were flippin’ well auburn too.

His eyes looked back at him through round-framed ‘Lennon’ specs.

‘You look terrible,’ he told himself.

Well, why not?
he argued back.
I’ve got every right to look terrible.

Why not indeed. He was scared. Really scared. He’d not stepped out of his room now for what? … Four, five days? Missed half a dozen study periods and lectures and his flatmates were beginning to mutter about him in the hallway outside his door. They’d already thought he was a bit of an oddball before … well, before …
this
.

Outside it was dark. Eleven. He could hear the thud of music coming from the floor below. He recognized it: Chili Peppers. His flatmates were playing
Mario
on the SNES; there was a lot of noise, the
clack-fissss
of cans of beer being popped open, and laughing, lots of laughing … most probably about him.

Not so big a deal to him now. A week ago stuff like that got him down a bit, being a loner, being perceived as the resident freak. But he brushed off the quips and sniggering at his expense the way every hardened geek does it, by acting as if far greater matters were on his mind, matters these beer-swilling oiks wouldn’t even begin to understand.

One day I’ll be flying business class … and, you idiots, you’ll be serving fries somewhere.

That’s the sort of thing he usually said aloud. The lads laughed and shook their heads at his lame and faltering comeback. But he quietly smiled because he knew it was undoubtedly going to be true. And that, he figured, was how he and every other geek coped with being the frozen-out loner – the certainty that there’d come a day of mega payback for all the jibes and the sniggering.

But right now he really
did
have far, far greater matters on his mind.

Why me? How do they know my name? Oh God … who are ‘they’?

All of a sudden the throbbing music and the drunken guffawing stopped. He realized the front doorbell to their digs had just gone. He licked dry, cracked lips and realized he was holding his ragged breath to hear better who was down there at the door; to hear who’d come knocking at so late an hour.

He could hear Lance’s Glaswegian accent … and who else? Another murmuring voice. Quiet, polite, businesslike. Female.

Lance was trying it on, some witty banter, loosened up by the beer. His easy Celtic charm usually worked flawlessly on the ‘freshers’, first-year girls looking for an older, wiser university boyfriend. But, from the murmuring tone of this female visitor, she seemed wholly uninterested.

He heard Lance’s attitude suddenly change. Clearly facing a rejection for the first time in his life. He sounded like a petulant child. ‘Well, if you really want to see the freak … he’s up the stairs. Second on the right.’

Adam heard footsteps on the uncarpeted hallway and up the wooden stairs.

His heart was pounding in his chest, his stomach suddenly churning like a spin dryer.

‘Oh G-God … it’s …’

Them.

His mind spun between two options: to go for the window, clamber out, drop down outside and run for his life. Or to stay put and meet them. See what they wanted from him.

Oh God, oh God, oh God …

Maddy stood outside the door. She turned to look at Becks before gently rapping on it with her knuckles. ‘Adam Lewis?’

There was no answer. But she heard something stirring inside, the clunk and scrape of footsteps.

‘Adam?’ she called softly. ‘Can we talk to you?’

A long pause. Downstairs she could hear the murmur of male voices, no doubt talking about her and Becks. Actually, probably just Becks. She was well aware the support unit tended to attract the gaze of excitable testosterone-fuelled young men. Finally she heard a shuffling sound from just beyond the door.

‘
Who … who are y-you?
’ a voice came through the keyhole.

‘My name’s Maddy.’

‘
Are … y-you … h-here to g-get me?
’ The voice sounded pitiful, thin with fear.

‘No. I’m not here to
get
you. I just want to talk to you.’

‘I … did … what I was told. I d-did exactly … w-what it told me to d-do …’

Maddy had no idea what he was talking about. But she decided the only way she was going to get him to open the door was to mention something very specific.

‘Adam … I’m here about a particular word.’

Silence.

‘I’m here to talk about
Pandora
.’

She heard the dull click of the lock turning and the door cracked open an inch. A pale face dotted with spots and the glint of spectacles appeared in the space between the door and frame. ‘Are y-you … are you …
the one
?’

Go on, Maddy, play along with him.
She offered him a reassuring smile. ‘Sure, I’m
the one
.’

‘The … the one who w-will explain? B-because I n-need to know … I … I …’

‘I’ll do my very best, Adam … if you’ll just let us in.’

The crack widened another half-inch as the glinting of spectacles shifted to study Becks. ‘And who’s
she
?’

‘She’s a friend. She’s no harm. Just a friend.’

‘D-does she know? A … about … P-Pandora?’

‘Yes.’

Adam studied them both for another few seconds before finally his face pulled back into the darkness and with a creak of worn hinges the door swung slowly open, inviting them in.

It was too dark to see anything, but the room she stepped into smelled musty. A room, she guessed, that was probably littered with dirty clothes and underwear lying in crumpled piles. ‘Can we have a light on in here?’ she asked.

‘Y-yes … sure.’ A moment later a bedside lamp snicked on.

The room was as small and as messy as she’d expected. But the walls … the walls caught her breath. She’d done a couple of terms of college before dropping out and getting a programming job. She’d had a room like this once and covered its walls with posters of sci-fi movies she loved like
Aliens
,
Predator
,
Serenity
, computer games, bands and stuff.

But this – this was plain weird.

All four walls seemed to be covered with sheets of paper filled by the handwritten scrawl of strange-looking hieroglyphics.

‘So you’re pretty keen on – what? Egyptian stuff, then?’ she said, breaking the silence.

‘Uh … oh … yeah. No, it’s not hieroglyphics. I’m into cryptanalysis.’ He turned back to her. ‘You – you said you’re
the
one
, right? That’s w-who you are? The one who explains it?’

Now they were through the door, she decided it was going to be best to come clean and confess she really didn’t know much, if anything. ‘Adam, we’re here because of a message you posted on the Net.’

‘Net?’

Maddy shook her head. Of course, back in 1994 they called it the Web. A different language for the technology they took for granted in 2010. ‘You posted on the university’s public forum that you’d decoded a complete sentence of the …’ She forgot the name of the thing.

‘The Voynich Manuscript,’ said Becks, helping her out.

He nodded his head vigorously. ‘Yes … yes. I did! That’s what, that’s exactly what I was instructed to do. I – I did exactly what I was told. I did what –’

‘Told?
Told?
By who?’

Adam looked from Maddy to Becks, then back again, completely bewildered. ‘By
you
? … I was kind of thinking you’re involved?’

‘Not me.’ Maddy shook her head. ‘I never heard of the Voynich Manuscript until last night.’

Adam still appeared completely on edge and wary of them both. ‘Never heard of it?’

‘Nope.’

He licked dry lips. ‘So you
can’t
be the one. You can’t tell me why my name’s in the –’

Maddy raised her hands to calm him down. ‘I know about Pandora, Adam. I know that much.’

He regarded her suspiciously.

‘You’re involved … us too, in whatever this means. I’m just trying to make some sense of it. I need to know what it means too. Please,’ she said softly, ‘please … why don’t you tell me about this Voynich document?’

His eyes flickered uncertainly from her to Becks.

‘Please?’ She spread her hands in a disarming way. ‘Then maybe the three of us can figure this out together? Huh?’

‘Yeah, sure.’ He seemed relieved at the suggestion, relieved to have somebody else to share what he knew.

As an afterthought he nodded towards a stool and a beanbag. ‘Want to sit down?’

Maddy smiled. ‘Thanks.’ She unzipped her anorak and laid it on the bed and gestured to Becks to settle down on the beanbag. She was going to look less intimidating that way than standing over them both like a guard dog.

‘So?’ Maddy looked at Adam expectantly.

He sat down on the end of his bed. ‘It’s the ultimate challenge for code-breakers,’ he started. ‘It’s a several-hundred-pages-long document that’s been carbon-dated back to the twelfth century and the entire volume is written in a completely unknown language. I mean the whole thing … is a bunch of characters and glyphs that have never been used in
any
other written form.’