Infinity Cage (3 page)

‘So? Where do we go to find him?’ Maddy was looking at Rashim expectantly. ‘You’re the one who was living in Waldstein’s time. I was hoping you’d have some thoughts on that.’

They were sitting in Bentham’s Pie Shop. Liam’s choice. Eighteen months of dodgy mutton curries and oven-baked flat breads had taken its toll on him and now all he wanted was stodgy, steaming British comfort food: viscous beef-and-gravy fillings topped with thick flaking pastry lids.

‘Yes, I’m from his time,’ replied Rashim, ‘but that does not mean I was intimately acquainted with the man.’

‘You know about him.’

‘Of course I do. Any scientist or theoretical physicist from the forties onwards knows all about Waldstein. Just as any scientist in the twentieth century would know about Einstein.’

‘Stein!’ Liam blurted out. The others turned to look at him. ‘Just thinking,’ he said. ‘Why is it every brainbox science fella has a name ending with “
stein
”? Einstein, Waldstein, Frankenstein.’

Rashim rolled his eyes. ‘Newton, Tesla, Hawking, Higgs, Koothrappali, Chan, Lee … shall I go on? Yes? Maynard, Watt, Kaspersky, Vasquez –’

‘OK,’ cut in Maddy, ‘I think he gets the point.’ She dipped
a hunk of bread into the beef stew in front of her. ‘Rashim, we need to know when and where we’ll have our best chance at getting to him.’

‘The obvious and best-documented moment where Waldstein could be met would be the Chicago demonstration in 2044,’ said Rashim. ‘I mean, that is very well covered. There is footage of the event that we can look at. But –’

‘But we’d be talking to a younger Waldstein who’d have no idea who the hell we are because he wouldn’t have set up the TimeRiders agency by then.’

‘Precisely. Not for at least another fifteen years or so.’

‘Right, so that’s clearly no good. He said in the message that “your work is done”. Which I presume refers to the virus. Either it’s happened or is about to happen. So I guess it’s safe to presume Bob’s calculation was correct; that message came from the first two or three months of 2070?’

‘Hmm. After his spot at the last international TED Talks in Montreal in 2050, Waldstein became a complete recluse. His business had a number of locations. I think he had –’

‘Information: Roald Waldstein’s commercial empire, W.G. Systems, has the following publicly listed premises,’ said Becks. ‘A New York-based patent and legal office, a Californian software-development campus, a carbon-fibre fabrication plant in Tokyo, an Oregon-based genetic research division, a Denver-based energy-research campus and a Wyoming-based research and development facility.’

Rashim nodded. ‘He also had a number of private retreats. I do recall reading that he owned one of the artificial islands-on-stilts off the coast of Dubai.’

‘So he could be hanging around at any one of those places at any time?’ Maddy puffed her cheeks. ‘Great.’

‘I remember while I was working on phase one of Project
Exodus, in 2068, there was a digi-docu on one of the news-streams about Roald Waldstein. That was the summer before the Japanese/North Korean cold war turned into a hot war. And then –’ Rashim rolled his hands, one over the other – ‘you, of course, know how it all goes from there.’

Maddy and Liam nodded.

‘Anyway, the two most likely locations that the message was transmitted from in early 2070,’ said Rashim, ‘would be the W.G. Systems’ HQ in New York or their research campus near Denver, Colorado. Waldstein’s base of operations for his agency would require privacy, energy, security. The corporation’s head office and research campus were both known to be hard places to gain access to.’

‘We may need to try both those locations. How far apart are they?’

‘Quite far.’

‘So, I guess we’ll portal to one, then the other.’

‘That might be unwise, Maddy.’

‘Why?’

‘Think about it … this is 2070. There are many monitoring agencies in this time scanning for tachyon particles. When we open a portal, we run the risk of being picked up on someone’s particle-scanning array. We may be attracting attention.’

‘Seriously?’

Rashim nodded. ‘Trust me, in 2070
every
world power is busy scanning for tachyon emissions.’ He shrugged. ‘Just as every world power is busy, secretly, racing to build their own time machines. Portalling in once, we will attract someone’s attention. If we’re portalling around all over the place, we will get zeroed in on.’

‘Well, OK … if we open one, say, in New York, and Waldstein’s not there, I guess we can catch a plane or something to Denver?’

Rashim shook his head. ‘It is not quite that simple. America is not like it was in
your
time.’

Maddy raised an eyebrow, querying him. ‘There
are
planes, right?’

‘My time is in chaos. Things were beginning to break down. Law and order, government control. There were … 
will be
, I should say … food shortages, power-outs. It is a very difficult time. A dangerous time. America is fragmented badly.’

‘Fragmented?’ Liam looked up from his pie. ‘What do you mean?’

‘In 2070, it is called the Federated States. It is a much smaller nation that extends from the west coast to the Midwest. All of the eastern states have been abandoned.’

‘Abandoned?’

‘It is a wilderness. Ungovernable. Largely unpoliced, chaotic. A no-man’s-land of refugee camps.’

‘Why?’ asked Maddy.

‘There is the rising Atlantic, the rising Gulf of Mexico; the eastern coast and many of the southern states are partially flooded. The Capitol was relocated from Washington to Denver in 2063.’

‘Why didn’t he just send a location data stamp with the message?’ asked Liam. ‘If he really wanted to meet, surely he’d do that?’

‘Well, obviously he didn’t want to broadcast who the message was from,’ replied Maddy. ‘That was a broad-bandwidth message computer-Bob picked up. He’s just being super-cautious. Rashim, come on … where do you suggest we go first?’

‘New York, perhaps? There was the W.G.S. Tower, overlooking Times Square. Even when the levees eventually failed and Manhattan became waterlogged, a section of the
business district remained open, operating several floors above street level. I know Waldstein spent some of his time living at the top of the W.G.S. Tower.’

‘Why there? Why not one of any of the other more secure places where W.G. Systems had facilities?’

‘I don’t know. I do remember, in that digi-docu programme, one of the last interviews he gave was from there. From the rooftop of his tower. He said something about loving the view from up there. The sunrises and sunsets across the sea. “Watching the green lady slowly wading into the deep.”’

‘You mean the Statue of Liberty?’ said Liam.

‘Yes,’ replied Rashim. ‘He said watching the sea level rise made it look like she was a bather slowly wading out into deeper waters.’

‘So … we aim for the beginning of 2070. New York, then. If he’s not there, we’ve got enough time to make our way across to Denver before that Kosong-ni virus outbreak begins.’

‘That’s your plan, Mads?’ said Liam. ‘That’s it? A leisurely stroll across America in the hope of bumping into Mr W.’

‘It’s the best plan I’ve got. So what’s yours? Huh?’

He shrugged. ‘First-century Jerusalem, round about the time of you-know-who. I’ll go back there and see what I can see. Might even get his autograph if I can.’

She shook her head. ‘Sheesh, so just about as concise a plan as mine, then?’

He shrugged. ‘Details to be ironed out. The difference is nobody’s scanning for tachyons back then. Nobody’s out to kill me back then and nobody’s got guns back then … and, of course, I’ll have Bob.’

‘Uhh … actually, I was thinking we’d have Bob along with us.’

‘All right, so then we’ll toss a coin to see who’s having him.’

Maddy buried her face in her hands. ‘Jesus … Liam, are we really going to do this? Fling ourselves out there in different directions with just a frikkin’ hope and a prayer? Are we being stupid? Reckless?’

‘Haven’t we always been?’ He laughed. ‘As far as I can see, we’ve never had much of a plan. We’ve just dealt with whatever came our way.’

‘Great … and look where that’s got us.’

‘Alive, Mads … we’re alive.’ He leaned forward on to the table and nudged one of her shoulders with his. ‘We should be dead. In fact, we were never meant to be alive in the first place. So … everything we have now, every moment, every memory, and all that we know … it’s all a bonus.’ He grinned. ‘And, I promise you, we’ll be back in that dungeon in a few days’ time … and we’ll have all those answers between us.’

She looked at him. ‘Liam, what is it with you? Nothing ever worries you, does it?’

‘Ahh, I do my fair share of worrying … to be sure.’

‘But you always bounce back up with that dumb-ass grin on your face. Shiny, like a new penny.’

‘Speaking of pennies …’ He pulled a coin from his waistcoat pocket. ‘For Bob this is, OK? Heads or tails?’

Maddy decided to open a portal somewhere familiar. Somewhere they’d know and at least be able to get their bearings. A quick pinhole viewing confirmed what they’d expected to see: Brooklyn’s streets lost beneath a permanent, stagnant carpet of water. Rooftops and windowsills growing green and wild with tall weeds and saplings.

The first two to go through, Rashim and Becks, burdened with backpacks crammed with tins of food, readied themselves on the sawdust plinths. Maddy counted them down and, with a hum building up to a crescendo, then a puff of evacuated air, they were gone. Just Maddy, Liam and Bob left.

She looked around their dungeon as the displacement machine recharged itself for the next release of energy. This place had begun to feel just as much a home to them as their archway beneath the Williamsburg Bridge once had. The modest touches of comfort had begun to clutter and cover the dungeon like barnacles on a ship’s hull: the hammocks strung up behind the curtains, the commode in the corner hidden by a sky-blue satin drape on a loop of rope, the threadbare armchairs round their communal table, messy with mismatched crockery, their kitchenette with its modern, out-of-place electric kettle, toaster and a single-hob stove, and a rack of shelves where plain vanilla cartons of milled oats jostled for space with the last boxes of
Rice Krispies. Beside the armchairs and table, a small coal burner with a smoke hood and a chimney flue improvised to direct the smoke out of the archway through a hole in the wall on to Farringdon Street. Damp clothes hung on wooden laundry frames round it. Normally it glowed a welcoming, flickering amber. Now it was all cold grey ashes. In one corner were several tall oak wardrobes in which the accumulated clothing from several trips into the past hung tidily from coat hangers.

She looked around and felt sad. Yes, it was just beginning to feel vaguely homely. Well, it
had
been … then events had once again spun out of her control: the trip to the jungle … the tachyon beam there, Sal’s and Adam’s deaths …

Liam and Rashim had made a supreme effort to yank her out of the spiral of depression that she’d begun to orbit. They’d nagged and cajoled until she’d wearily given in and let them drag her away to explore the furthest reaches of the British Empire. An extended holiday travelling on steamships and trains to the Far East, India, Africa and back again. Bless them for trying so hard … all of that had helped. Had lifted her spirits. She suspected Liam was not only trying to keep her mind off grieving but also trying to show her that an exciting world lay out there beyond the soot-filled skies of London. That there was a life to be lived beyond the burden of what they knew about the future. If the end of mankind was just shy of two hundred years away from now, all three of them could still live out their natural lives, even find partners and, perhaps, if their engineered bodies allowed it, maybe even have children. And their children would have time to have children and grandchildren. Five, perhaps six, generations could live out their lives before the end of humanity finally arrived. That was a future worth living for, wasn’t it?

But, since they’d returned from their travels, this place hadn’t once felt like a home. With Sal gone, it seemed different. It was
no longer some thrilling twilight Batcave from which the six of them could plan their next exciting adventure. Instead it felt like a truly melancholic place; like a party where too few guests arrive, shuffle their feet and mutter niceties before excusing themselves early. Maddy noted Sal’s few possessions lying around: her diary (that Liam seemed to have taken over), a loose folder of pencil sketches she’d made of them – some of them pretty good – and there was her hoody, still hanging over the side of her hammock, and a pair of her trainers tucked side by side beneath it.

She sensed the loss of Sal like she now felt the creeping damp in here. It no longer seemed like their home, more like a dark and dank prison cell. A place to escape from.

SpongeBubba sat inert in the corner beside the computer bench like a broken toy. Rashim had flipped his power over-ride switch so that he was properly off and not just in a dormant low-charge state that he could emerge from at will. There was no knowing for sure when they were all going to be returning.

‘Why the hell does this feel like a goodbye, Liam?’

‘No reason why it should. You’re seeking answers, I’m seeking answers. We’ll be back here comparing notes before you can say “Tawamattawockymickytata”.’

She smiled. ‘Oh yeah, that “Bend in the River” place in the jungle? I see you’ve been practising.’

‘Aye. Stupid name for a village, anyway.’

She stepped towards the desk and threw an arm round him, hugging him tightly. ‘Just you be very careful back there.’

‘Are you kidding? I’ve got Bob. He’s a one-man Roman legion. It’s you that needs to be careful, Mads. The future? Well, you know what I think about heading there.’

‘I can’t ignore the invitation. That’s the first and only time
Waldstein has ever attempted direct contact with us. I have to go … I need this. You know that.’

He looked at her for a moment, then nodded. ‘Aye. But it’s stupid.’

‘It’s necessary.’ She stepped back and smiled. ‘A few days or weeks from now, we’ll all be back here. We’ll know everything there is to know.’ She shrugged. ‘And maybe then we can make an informed decision for once … instead of winging it.’

‘Decision? About what?’

‘Whether we go on. Go our separate ways. Whatever … At least we’ll be free to go about our lives without having to look over our shoulders all the time.’

‘Go separate ways?’ Liam looked down at his hands. ‘Is that what this is?’

‘What?’

‘This … going to speak to Waldstein –’ he stroked the bristles on his chin – ‘is this you looking for a way to leave? Is this you asking his permission to cut free …? To go your own way and know he won’t be hunting you down?’

‘I’m after some answers, Liam. That’s all.’

‘Aye, and when you’ve got them?’

‘I don’t know. Who knows what the hell we’re going to find out? What that might change about us?’

‘I’m after answers too, Maddy. We’re here for a purpose.’

She glanced at Bob. ‘A mission?’

‘Aye. A mission. Maybe it’s Waldstein’s mission. Maybe we now have to work against him. I think we need to know that. And I think that giant tachyon transmitter is the bigger question, to be sure. Not the old man.’ He puffed air and shook his head incredulously. ‘I can’t believe that you’re not as curious about them as I am.’

‘Oh, I am … but …’ What she didn’t want to admit to him
was that that giant transmitter in the jungle terrified her. It radiated more than energy. It radiated menace. ‘Waldstein’s the one person we know who’s going to have answers, Liam. You want my opinion?’

‘You’re going to give it to me anyway.’

‘You’re going on a wild-goose chase.’

‘Aye, well … we’ll see.’

They stared at each other, sharing an awkward silence. Maddy cracked first. ‘So, have you decided your call-back window?’

‘Aye. I’ll give me and Bob a week back in Jerusalem to see what’s what.’

‘A week?’

‘I wouldn’t mind seeing what it’s like in Bible times. Anyway … we’ll be back here long before you, I’m sure.’

Liam was probably right. They were going to have to find out where the reclusive billionaire, Waldstein, was hiding away. The only return window she’d scheduled was an hour after the outward one. In the same spot. Just in case they needed to beat a hasty retreat. But, in truth, she had no idea how long or difficult or dangerous their jaunt into the future was going to be. Maybe
her
mission was going to be the wild-goose chase.

They were probably pushing their luck. Two missions at the same time? No one back in the dungeon keeping an eye on things, waiting for a sign, a time wave, on the lookout for a
get-me-back-home-now
message?

She glanced at the monitors on the computer bench. A row of twelve quietly humming personal computers wired together, working in parallel to host an artificial intelligence that she’d come to view as a trustworthy colleague, if not a friend.

Computer-Bob. If Liam ran into trouble, there might be some way he could leave a message through time for the AI to pick up. Maddy on the other hand … she was relying on finding
Waldstein, who obviously had a displacement machine of his own. There was, however, the distinct possibility that both teams could end up being marooned. Which was why she’d given computer-Bob some instructions to carry out in the event that he found himself all alone here in London.

One of the screens displayed a dialogue box with text written in a font large enough so that she could see it from the square plinth of sawdust she was standing beside.

> Charge complete. Are you ready to go, Maddy?

She stepped up on to the plinth. ‘And don’t forget – if you do bump into
you-know-who
, get him to say something really useful.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like … 
Blessed are women, for they make far smarter decisions than dudes
.’

He laughed. ‘Right.’

‘And it’s totally OK to be gay, straight, black, brown … and listen to banjo music.’

‘I’ll try to remember.’

‘And … I want an autograph.’ She grinned. ‘Can you imagine what I’d get for that on Craigslist?’

‘I’ll do my best, Mads.’ He reached out and grabbed her arm. ‘Stay safe … and come home, all right?’

She nodded. ‘I better go … Rashim will be wondering what’s happened to me.’ She nodded towards the webcam on the bench. The nearest equivalent to direct eye contact. ‘Computer-Bob?’

> Yes, Maddy?

‘In the event of … of the worst-case scenario – the one we talked about earlier – you know what you have to do?’ That was something she’d discussed with Liam and Rashim – the possibility that some self-destruct process needed to be agreed. If they all went missing, this place couldn’t be left intact.

> Yes, Maddy. I will ensure the displacement machine is rendered inoperable, then complete a hard-drive wipe across the computer network.

They’d agreed that if Liam’s return window didn’t bring them back, and if she wasn’t able to request a return portal from the future, computer-Bob was to allow six real-time months to pass here before destroying the machine and erasing himself.

‘And … meantime, if anyone unauthorized enters this archway without us … then you do the same. Wipe everything. Do you understand?’

> Yes. I understand. We have already discussed these protocols.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Yes … yes, of course we have.’ She looked at Liam. ‘I’m just –’

‘I know. Clucking like a mother hen.’

‘Being thorough … I was going to say.’

> Do not worry, Maddy. I will make sure this technology does not fall into the wrong hands.

‘Good. Right. Then … I guess I’m ready to go. You better give Liam the countdown.’

A digital display appeared on one of the screens. One minute to go. She watched the seconds tick down.

She listened to internal circuit switches clicking, the building hum of energy peaking held at bay and ready to be released. A sudden and melancholic notion occurred to her.

This could be the very last time I see this place
.

A stupid thought really. After all, every time they’d opened a window to the past, it could quite easily have been her last jump. There was no knowing what fate existed round the very next corner. All the same … it did somehow feel a little bit like a goodbye.

‘Liam?’

‘Aye?’

She couldn’t think of anything meaningful to say. Nothing that could sum up the confusing swirl of thoughts and emotions inside her. ‘Just be careful, OK?’

‘Always am, Mads. Always am.’ He looked at the countdown display. ‘Ten seconds. Hands by your side and stand still like a good girl.’

‘Liam, you know I love you, right?’ she blurted as the noise of the displacement machine began to fill their dungeon. She wanted to quickly add something about not in ‘that way’ … but as a dear friend, as a brother, as a comrade in arms. But, as always seemed to be the case, her farewell words were being cruelly drowned out and she’d have to bellow them to him. But she saw she didn’t need to. He nodded back at her and mouthed, ‘
I know. Me too
.’

The countdown on the screen showed five seconds. Time for one last reassuring smile. He replied with a wink … and a wave.

Then she was gone and Liam watched the displacement field collapse to a pinprick of light, then vanish.