There was an instant silence as all eyes swivelled to him and Becks.
Liam grinned self-consciously. ‘Uh, we… that’s to say me and Becks here, we’re not er… students as such. We’re sort of agents from another time.’
Fourteen pairs of eyes on him and none of them seemed to have anything close to a grasp on what he’d just said.
‘See, we’re time travellers and we came along today to try to protect him,’ he said, pointing at Edward Chan who was sitting on the grass, arms wrapped round his huddled knees.
Edward Chan’s eyes widened. ‘Uh? Am I in trouble?’
‘You, Edward. We came to find out how we were going to protect you from an attempt on your life.’
The others looked at the small Chinese boy then back at Liam.
‘You better explain about him, Becks,’ said Liam. ‘You’ve got all the facts in your head.’
Becks nodded. ‘Listen carefully,’ she began. ‘Time travel will become a viable technology in the year 2044 when a Professor Roald Waldstein will build the world’s first time machine and successfully transport himself into the past and return safely to his time. The practical technology developed by Waldstein in 2044 is largely based on the theories developed and published in Scientific American by the Department of Physics, University of Texas in 2031. The article is entitled “Zero-point Energy: energy from space-time vacuum, or inter-dimensional leakage?”.’
Kelly’s tired face lit up. ‘You gotta be kidding?’
Whitmore looked at the bewildered young boy hugging his own knees on the ground in front of him. ‘So how does this affect this boy?’
Becks’s cool grey eyes panned smoothly across to Chan. ‘The article published in Scientific American is a reproduction of a maths thesis presented by one Edward Aaron Chan. An act of academic plagiarism by his supervising professor.’
Edward looked up at her. ‘Me? Really?’
‘Correct. You will submit your dissertation to the Department of Physics for evaluation with an almost identical title in the summer of 2029, when you are twenty-six years of age. The department head, Professor Miles Jackson, will attempt to take credit for your work when it is approved for publication several months later, but he will be exposed as a plagiarist shortly after the article’s publication.’
‘But you said you’d come to protect him from an attempt on his life… why would someone want to kill Chan?’ asked Whitmore.
‘Edward Chan is the true originator of time travel,’ replied Becks. ‘In the future, 2051, time-travel technology becomes forbidden under international law because of the danger it poses to all mankind. This law is a result of years of campaigning by Roald Waldstein, the inventor of the first viable time machine, to prevent any further development of the technology.’
‘Wald-… the man who builds this first machine?’ said one of the students, a tough-looking Hispanic boy. Liam noticed his name tag was still on his chest: JUAN HERNANDEZ.
Becks’s gaze panned across to him. She waited silently for him to continue.
‘Why?’ asked Juan. ‘Why build the thing, then, you know, campaign against usin’ it? Don’t make any sense.’
Liam answered. ‘Waldstein never ever revealed what he saw on his first and only trip into the past… never talked to anyone about it. It was a big secret what he saw. But he was once heard to say that he’d looked upon the very bowels of Hell itself.’ Liam could have added more, could have added that maybe he’d glimpsed, for a few seconds, something of that himself.
Becks continued. ‘Waldstein’s campaign gained popular support. It is logical to presume that it may be one of his more fanatical supporters who has somehow managed to travel back in time to find Chan and attempt to kill him, to retroactively prevent him writing his thesis, and thus prevent or forestall the invention of time travel.’
A long silence followed filled only with the gentle rustle of the jungle’s trees and the far-off high-pitched squawk of some jungle creature. It was Whitmore who cut it short. ‘Well, OK… that’s all very fascinating, but what just happened? Where are we and how do we get back?’
Becks’s eyelids fluttered for a moment. ‘The geopositional coordinates will not have changed. We are exactly where we were.’
‘Yeah, right, man!’ snapped Juan. ‘There ain’t no jungle like this. Not in Texas!’
‘We’re still in the same place,’ said Liam, ‘but it’s when we are that’s changed. Right?’
‘Affirmative.’ Liam nudged Becks. ‘Yes…’ Becks corrected herself.
‘Which, if Franklyn is correct, is sixty-five million years ago,’ said Whitmore, loosening his tie and unbuttoning the top button of his sky-blue shirt, already stained with dark underarm patches of sweat.
Liam smiled thinly. ‘Yup, that’s about it.’
The technician who’d survived and come through with them dipped his head and shook it. ‘Then we really are totally, totally in trouble, man.’
Liam wanted to say something like he’d been in this kind of mess before, that there might possibly be a way out of here for them, that at the very least they had a genetically enhanced and very lethal combat unit, with an embedded supercomputer, disguised as an oversized gothic Barbie doll, here to help them all out. But he figured right now that would probably be one detail too many for them to have to cope with.
Kelly removed his linen jacket, no longer looking smooth and groomed and, like Whitmore, sweating large dark patches in the hot and humid air. ‘So what are we going to do now?’
And, once more, all eyes rested on Liam.
Aw, Jay-zus… What? I’m in charge now?
It looked like he and Becks weren’t going to be able to sidle away, that they were lumbered with the others. Liam sighed. ‘Survival,’ he said eventually. ‘I suppose we’d better start thinking about that. You know? Water, food, weapons, some sort of a camp. The rest… if there is a rest… well, I suppose that can come later.’
CHAPTER 24
65 million years BC, jungle
Howard took a break from the work of hacking at the vines and bamboo canes with his improvised machete: a jagged strip of metal — part of the reactor’s shell — with a handle made of coarse leaves wrapped round one end and secured with shoelaces. As a machete it worked surprisingly well and, from the other jagged strips of reinforced alloy that had materialized in the past with them, they’d managed to produce nine very useful cutting implements like this one.
The Hispanic boy, Juan, was working alongside him while across the clearing, shimmering with the heat of the midday sun, he could see some of the others fashioning simple spears out of the thicker bamboo canes they’d cut down.
‘That’s bull, man,’ muttered Juan, following his gaze. ‘We ain’t gonna kill anything with these pointy sticks.’
Howard nodded wearily and grunted something back, but his eyes were on Chan, standing next to that weird red-haired girl, as he ham-fistedly attempted to whittle a sharp end on a three-foot cane. She and the odd Irish boy… they’d given their names as Becks and Liam, but if they were covert agency operatives from the year 2001, they were probably aliases.
Which agency, though? Who sent them?
As far as Howard knew, no government, anywhere, was meant to have functioning time-travel technology. Although obviously the most powerful nations — the Chinese Federation, the European Bloc, the United States — must secretly have been developing it. And those two presumably must be field operatives working for one of them, here to protect Chan.
The Irish boy seemed to be calling the shots, with Whitmore, Kelly and the technician, Lam, happy for him to do so. Howard was content to go along with the status quo for now. Happy to carry on playing the role of timid young Lenny Baumgardner, a high-school student with straight As and a perfect school attendance record. It kept things simple for the moment. After all, the presiding question now was one of survival — the basics: food, water, shelter.