Infinity Cage (27 page)

Liam looked up from the brick floor of the dungeon, hoping to see Maddy, Rashim and Becks looking down at him. But there was no one here. A moment later, Bob thudded down to the ground beside him with a
whuff
of expelled breath.

The portal collapsed behind them both.

Bob looked at him. ‘Maddy has not returned yet?’

Liam looked around. He had been hoping to see Maddy’s and Rashim’s legs dangling over the side of their hammocks, catching up on some post-mission napping. Or slouched in the armchairs round their table, enjoying some freshly brewed coffee. But no – they were definitely alone. Just the steadfast glow of the computer screens and the soft chug of the distant Victorian generator.

He got up and headed over to the computer table. ‘We’re back.’

> Welcome home, Liam.

‘Has Maddy been back since we went?’ Liam was still holding on to the hope that they might have returned, then decided to go out for a meat pie or an iced bun or something.

> Sorry, Liam. I have not heard from Maddy yet.

‘Not even a message?’

> There has been no communication.

‘Can we get a message to her?’

> I can send a tachyon signal forward, but I do not know precisely where to aim the signal.

‘Well …’ He stroked his chin. ‘Can’t we just aim it roughly at New York?’

> Yes, but it will be a broad-sweep signal. There is some risk involved in doing that. But also when?

‘Well … after their arrival. Directly after their arrival there. And aim it right at our Williamsburg archway. That’s where they were going, right?’

> Yes, Liam, that is where Maddy went. And what is the message?

‘All right, let me think … umm … OK, send this: “Have returned to base. Can confirm second beam is located beneath city. Going back to investigate.”’

> I will send this immediately, Liam.

‘Thank you, computer-Bob.’

Bob joined him. ‘Computer-Bob, we believe the second transmitter is located somewhere in the bedrock platform beneath the temple in the city of Jerusalem. Liam was able to penetrate the temple’s security measures and scout beneath the building.’

> That is good. Do you have coordinates?

Liam shook his head. ‘No … we don’t. I got down beneath the building. All right – it’s hard to say
exactly
where it was,’ he said. ‘I mean, I went down some steps, some more steps, then a cave, then a passage … then …’ He looked at Bob, then at the webcam on the desk. ‘That isn’t helping much, is it?’

> Not really, Liam. That is not very precise.

‘The thing is I know it’s somewhere beneath the temple building, maybe even beneath the compound; it’s all tunnels and catacombs and so on. I suspect the whole of that rocky base is
like a giant Swiss cheese. But I’m telling you it’s right down there for sure.’

‘Recommendation,’ said Bob. ‘We deploy an array of density scans beneath the temple.’

‘Hey!’ said Liam. ‘That was my idea!’

‘Of course it was.’ Bob acknowledged that with a smile. ‘I am elaborating on it. I recommend a ten-foot gap between each scan location. If we pick up a number of neighbouring scan locations that are registering as zero density, then it is possible we will have identified a large internal void.’

> Agreed.

‘In that case, I suggest we should start that search directly beneath the temple building first, then expand it out from there,’ said Liam. ‘I’m pretty sure it was right beneath the actual building. I’m sure I couldn’t have strayed too far; I was only down below for about twenty minutes. I couldn’t have wandered too far … and most of it was down.’

Bob nodded. ‘That is a viable plan. We should centre the search pattern on the area beneath the temple. Start there and spread outwards.’

Liam huffed and looked up at him again. ‘I just said that as well!’

‘I am confirming the idea is a sound one.’

‘You know what? You’re going the right way about getting a smacked arse.’

> I will proceed with that search pattern immediately.

‘Good,’ Liam said, nodding. ‘How long will that take?’

> .!..

‘What’s that supposed to mean, computer-Bob?’

> I have a question for you, Liam
.

‘Uh … all right. Ask away.’

> How long is a piece of string?

‘Huh? What? Why are you asking …?’

Bob smiled. ‘Computer-Bob has just told a funny joke. We can all do this now. Our data has been shared.’

> Hahaha.

> :p

Liam rolled his eyes. ‘Oh aye, I get it … My stupid question deserves an equally stupid question back? The pair of you fellas are just such a hoot.’ He sighed. ‘So, I guess it’s going to take however long it takes. Right?’

> Correct. I cannot tell you how long searching for something will take. I will of course notify you as soon as I have detected a large interior space.

‘All right … all right. Don’t get yer knickers in a twist.’

‘It’s just me living at this facility now,’ said Waldstein. His walk was the slow and laboured shuffle of an old and infirm man. ‘I let the last of my employees go home to their families three weeks ago. It’s just me now, rattling around here like a pea in a large tin.’

‘You let them go just before the K-N outbreak,’ said Maddy. ‘You knew exactly when it was coming, didn’t you?’

He led them through a rotating glass door that looked like it would normally be powered up and triggered by motion sensors into the foyer of a building. Before them was an unmanned reception desk with the W.G. Systems logo slanting across its dark marble top. Their footsteps clacked noisily across a shiny, slate-tile floor, echoing around the deserted, cavernous interior.

‘Yes, yes, of course I knew it was coming. I knew to the precise day when this was going to come our way. I’ve known that exact date for the last twenty-six years.’

She did the maths quickly in her head. ‘You’ve known since 2044?’ The year rang a bell with her and she gasped. ‘You knew then?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, seeing her eyes suddenly widen. ‘I’ve known since my very first practical demonstration of time displacement.’

‘The Chicago incident?’

Waldstein nodded.

‘So, with that demonstration … you went
forward
in time? Not back? You came to this year? To 2070? That’s how you found out what was going to happen?’

Waldstein wafted his hand in front of a sensor on a wall, and with a soft hum a section of the smooth granite slid gracefully open. He led them into a small elevator, then touched a screen. Doors closed them inside and then they felt a gentle tug as it began to ascend.

‘No,’ he replied after a few moments. ‘My first demonstration … I was the guinea pig, of course. But I didn’t go forward; I programmed the displacement machine to send me back into the past.’ Waldstein smiled at Maddy. ‘Travelling forward through time is an impressive demonstration, but not half as impressive as travelling backwards. I intended to go back in time to say goodbye to my wife and my son, Gabriel.’

The elevator door slid smoothly open and they found themselves staring out across a small lobby at a plate-glass, floor-to-ceiling window. Through the window she could see the bare trunks and branches of Douglas firs receding downhill towards a river valley, a breathtaking and heartbreaking view. Across the valley, in the distance, she could see the far slope of another peak cloaked in a swirling embrace of clouds.

‘But, unfortunately … I never got a chance to see them.’

He led them out of the elevator. They turned left through frosted-glass doors into an office. There was another receptionist’s desk, a dark green leather couch, a coffee table. Framed paintings hung on the wall. Maddy thought she vaguely recognized one of them: the childlike brushstrokes of a cluster of bright yellow flowers stuffed into a jug.

‘Yes,’ said Waldstein. ‘That’s a Picasso. And, yes, before
you ask … it
is
the original.’ He led them across the office towards mahogany doors on the far side. ‘My personal assistant, Margaret, she was rather fond of his work and wanted something to brighten up her office.’ He made a face. ‘I can’t see the appeal of it myself. Very primitive and naive, if you ask me. But … still, a good investment, I was reliably informed.’

He pushed the mahogany doors inwards and they entered a much grander space beyond. ‘And this is my personal office, my inner sanctum,’ he announced. ‘I hope you’ll excuse the mess. My cleaners and my personal staff … I let them all go home too.’

The room was large. Until recently it had just been his office. But it seemed he was now using it as his makeshift home. A bed lay unmade in one corner, blankets and sheets kicked aside at the end. There were several dirty plates stacked unevenly beside it. An enormous dark mahogany desk sat in front of another floor-to-ceiling window that looked out across what must have once been a spectacular panorama of the sprawling evergreens sweeping down from the mountain peaks. The desk was covered with a mess of dirty clothes, tinned food and more unwashed crockery. Waldstein slowly unzipped his anorak and struggled his way out of the sleeves.

‘I’ve been alone up here in these mountains for the last three weeks. Waiting for the end to finally come.’ He tossed the anorak carelessly on to the desk. ‘And waiting for you to come home to me.’ He looked at her, then at Becks. ‘I was hoping all three of my prodigal children might come. Not just one of you.’

‘Home?’ Maddy looked at him sharply. ‘This isn’t my
home
. I
did
have a home … kind of. Back in New York. Before you sent those support units out there to murder all of us!’

Waldstein glanced at Becks. ‘I see you managed to tame one of them.’

‘Yeah. She’s been house-trained. She follows me … not you now. Just in case you’re thinking of giving her any orders.’

He pulled a chair out from beneath the desk and eased himself wearily down on to it. ‘I’m so very sorry, my dear,’ he said. ‘So very sorry that this unpleasantness happened.’

His head dipped and he rubbed his tired face with wrinkled, liver-spotted hands. She realized for the first time how frail and old he looked. It felt like she was looking at Foster’s identical twin. His voice sounded much the same, that soft, cultured, neutral voice. But this was the ‘final-days’ version of Foster, the frail old man that she’d grabbed from the duck pond in Central Park and forced to come with them as they went on the run, heading north to Boston. The man who’d just wanted a few days, maybe a few weeks, of peace before his body finally gave out on him.

‘I got things all wrong. I admit I reacted too hastily.’ He looked down at his hands, rueful and chastened. ‘I regret that I acted pre-emptively … I panicked.’

‘Why the hell did you want to kill us? Why? I thought we were on the same side!’

He sighed. ‘It was your message. You asked about Pandora. No, dammit – you
demanded
to know what Pandora was. You threatened to not do your job.’ He looked up at her. ‘And that’s when you became a … a problem for me.’

‘A problem?!’ Maddy cried. ‘A
problem
?!’

‘A risk, then.’ He sat back in the seat slowly, tiredly. ‘You were back there in 2001. You had a working displacement machine. You communicated a message forward in time to me. The next message could have been a tachyon signal! Beamed forward without any thought of caution, right here to me!’

‘We had a right to know what was going on!’

‘Your next communication could have led the international commission right here! Right to my front door. Right to me!’ He shook his head. ‘Roald Waldstein … the famous campaigner against time-travel technology, the man who worked tirelessly to ensure no government agency, no corporation, no tinpot Third-World dictator ever invested resources in developing time-travel technology … and oh, look … ladies and gentlemen, it appears the old man has been secretly meddling with time travel all along!’

‘What else were we supposed to do?’ Maddy retorted. ‘You had us acting blindly. You had us preserving history – a history by the way that has led to this … the end of
everything
! The least you could have done was tell us
why
! Why the hell we should be ensuring our own doom!’

‘You had no need to know why. You had a clear brief. I kept it simple. You –’

‘
What?
’ She thumped her hand down on the desk. ‘My God! You arrogant son of a … Do you know how many times we’ve risked our lives for you? Do you have any idea what we’ve been through? We had every right, from the very beginning, to know why we were frikkin’ well doing all this!’

‘At the time I thought … I decided it would be simpler that way. A very clear and simple mission statement.’ He sighed. ‘With hindsight, yes, perhaps I should have told you more.’

‘Perhaps?!’ She turned away from him. Frustrated. Angry. Tearful. She wandered round the end of the desk over towards the window and watched the last stain of light in the sky disappear. She let her head rest against the plate glass with a soft bump. ‘Jesus,’ she muttered. ‘You ask someone to lay down their life … the least you can frikkin’ well do is tell them why.’

She wiped at her eyes. ‘You handed us the job of ensuring
the destruction of all of mankind,’ she uttered. ‘Didn’t it occur to you that it might be a good idea to tell us
why
?’

‘I never thought that you’d find out that our history ends in this horrific way. I assumed you and Liam and Sal would follow Foster’s guidelines. That you would never travel forward to this time. I assumed … hoped … that your focus would remain entirely on the past, on preserving history as it is.’ He sucked in a long breath and let out a wheezing sigh. ‘You would never have known an end was coming if my work hadn’t been sabotaged.’

Waldstein sighed. ‘One of my trusted assistants, a young man I completely trusted … found out about the end.’

‘And he left me a note in that San Francisco bank vault. Left it for me to find?’

‘Ahhh.’ Waldstein nodded. ‘So … 
that’s
how you found out?’ He closed his eyes. ‘I had my doubts about setting up that resupply location. That was Griggs’s idea. Not mine.’ He opened his eyes again. ‘It was Joseph Olivera, our junior partner in this agency, who attempted to sabotage the project. I don’t know how he found out that the world was going to come to an end in 2070, but he did. The young man should have come to me; he should have asked me why we were making sure that was our fate. I could have tried to explain it to him. But no … he just assumed I was a crazy old man. So, he acted on his own. He decided to let you know … with a note, it seems.’

‘Pandora … the note told us to look out for Pandora.’

‘Pandora, eh?’ Waldstein nodded. ‘A good enough codename for the truth, I suppose: the end of everything. Kosong-ni. He compromised the whole project by doing that. He made you suspect the agency, me …’

‘So you decided to murder us all? Just like that?’

Waldstein looked down at his hands.

‘You could’ve come back and talked to us. Explained yourself,’ said Maddy. ‘Surely talking to us would have been easier?’

‘You don’t understand. Olivera betrayed me back in 2055. Fifteen years ago the situation was very different. The world wasn’t falling apart. There were dozens of monitoring outposts being built around the world. All of them designed to sniff out time travel. And yes … the world was looking very closely at me. I couldn’t just vanish into the past to explain myself to you.’

‘You could.’

Waldstein shook his head. ‘Joseph made his decision. When I found out, I wanted to talk to him. To explain to him … but then the stupid young man stepped into an unverified portal. No density check … the poor fool didn’t even bother to verify if he was transporting into an empty space.’

Maddy had listened to Liam and Sal describe the horrific mess of a man they’d encountered back in 1831. ‘Yes. Liam and Sal came across him. He didn’t live for very long.’

‘
You actually met Joseph?
’

‘Liam and Sal did. Briefly.’ Without too much detail, she described what they’d come across: the young man fused with the body of a teamster’s horse. An appalling corrupted creation that managed to live for just a few moments.

Waldstein closed his eyes tightly; tears spilled out on to his dry, wrinkled cheeks. ‘Joseph … Joseph … Joseph … you poor fool.’

‘I think it was only a few seconds. He died quickly.’ According to Liam and Sal, the wretched, mangled remains of Olivera must have been alive for five or ten minutes. But she wasn’t going to share that with him. She watched him drop his face into his hands again and sob softly. ‘I’m sorry.’

Maddy gazed listlessly out of the now-dark window. She could see just one pinprick of light, the halogen spotlight that
was aimed at the corporate logo. She imagined, a few weeks ago, the chrome-and-glass research buildings, the whole campus, must have glowed with lights.

She broke the silence. ‘So then … things went all wrong when Joseph found out that the world was going to end. And that was back in 2055?’

Waldstein nodded.

‘That was fifteen years ago. So why’ve you waited until now to contact us?’

The old man looked up at her. ‘I don’t know. I was afraid. I panicked. Things had quickly got out of control. I didn’t know if those support units had been successful or not. I just … walked away from it all.’

‘But then you sent this message. When did you send that?’

‘A few days ago.’

‘Why?’

‘Because … no one’s watching any more. Pandora had finally happened. The job was done. Just as they wanted.’

‘They?’ She turned her back to the window. ‘Who’s “they”?’

Waldstein’s wrinkled face suddenly creased with the faintest hint of a smile. It looked like relief. Like the shedding of a long-shouldered burden.

‘Maddy, my dear girl, you won’t believe how long I’ve waited to be able to share this with someone else. How much I’ve wanted to share this with someone … 
anyone
.’

‘Share what?’

‘The answer … the answer to the biggest question of all.’

She shrugged, inviting him to elaborate.

‘Since the discovery of frequency wave-forms, since the invention of radio, for God’s sake … the big question we have been asking ourselves for the last two centuries … are we really all alone?’

‘Are we alone? You mean …?’

‘Maddy, why don’t you sit down? Let me tell you what happened on that very first trip I took in 2044 …’