And to Becks. ‘You clear on the mission parameters?’
Becks nodded calmly. ‘Affirmative.’
‘Maddy!’ called Sal. ‘You need to get down now, twenty seconds left!’
She clambered down the ladder and took a couple of steps back from the bottom of the tube as Sal counted out the last ten seconds.
Adam was gazing with unconcealed wonder at the workings of the displacement machine: a rack of circuitry and looped wires. The arch filled with the increasing hum of suppressed energy building up and eager to be unleashed.
‘Is that buzzing noise normal?’ he asked, but his voice was all but lost against the increasing electrical hum.
‘Seven … Six …’ continued Sal.
Maddy fought a growing urge to yell out an abort. Maybe this was one mission that wasn’t theirs to worry about. Maybe she should have consulted with Foster first. Maybe she should have sent a message forward to the future to check if anyone else was handling it. There were probably a dozen or more ‘maybes’ she could come up with.
‘Four … Three …’
Fact is, Sal spotted a small time wave and they were duty-bound not to walk away from that. Fact is, there was a man standing here in their archway who really shouldn’t be. Who really shouldn’t know about them and what they were up to.
And yes, fact is, I need to know what Pandora is. What does it mean? Who wants me to know about it?
‘Two … One!’
Too late for second thoughts now, Maddy.
Energy pulsed out of the machinery beside the tube and, with a loud, echoing thud of flexing perspex, Liam, the two support units and several dozen gallons of water were instantly gone.
Adam filled the silence with his own whispered voice.
‘Absolutely … in-cred-i-ble!’
CHAPTER 20
1194, Kirklees Priory, Yorkshire
A heavy and wet landing. Liam staggered under the impact, dropping to his knees as the white mist of chaos space quickly evaporated from around him.
‘Ow!’ he yelped as he slowly attempted to get to his bare feet. The ground beneath him was a lumpy dark soil rendered as hard as sharp-edged rock by a thick morning frost. Shivering in just his boxer shorts, he looked up to see the three of them were standing in the middle of a small and empty windswept field. The lifeless light of a pale sun hiding behind featureless scudding clouds made the winter morning seem like a forlorn twilight.
‘L-lovely.’ Liam shuddered, hugging himself.
‘We should get dressed immediately,’ advised Bob.
‘T-t-too r-right,’ he chattered.
He slid back the zip of his plastic bag and pulled out a thick coarse woollen robe of olive green and eagerly pulled it over his head, ignoring the scratching against his skin. Next, a pair of thick cotton leggings. Not technically of the period, but the best they could get at short notice. As a precaution Sal had unpicked the brand label and wash instructions. It looked convincing enough to Liam’s eye and hopefully no one was going to be studying his undergarments too closely. Finally, a pair of soft leather shoes with wooden soles, picked up at the fancy-dress hire store, and a length of braided rope to secure the robe around his waist.
As they dressed in hurried silence he watched a dozen crows circling in the grey-white sky above; their cawing echoed across the stillness like a caution. He listened to the mournful hum of a fresh wind and the dry rustle of dead leaves picked up and tossed from one ploughed furrow into the next.
‘It’s n-not w-what I expected,’ he uttered, his teeth still chattering as he cinched the rope belt tightly round him.
Becks’s head appeared through the neck-hole of a muddy brown dress. ‘What were you expecting, Liam O’Connor?’
He shrugged. ‘Green woods … sunny meadows … may flowers.’
She frowned and cocked her head. ‘Why? It is winter.’
Liam watched a plume of his breath curl, twist and drift away from him. ‘Dunno really. I just — ’
‘Recommendation,’ said Bob, ‘we should dispose of these bags immediately.’
‘Agreed.’
Bob kicked at the ground and dislodged a dark clod of soil. Then squatted down and began digging with his big hands like a dog burrowing for a bone. Liam handed Becks his bag and then took the opportunity to study their surroundings. Ahead of them the field ended at the edge of a wood. He turned. Behind them the field rolled over the gentle brow of a hill, and beyond that he could just make out a thin line of smoke drifting up from the top of a stone chimney.
‘Hey! There’s something over there,’ he said.
‘Affirmative,’ both support units chorused.
Liam tutted at them both. ‘What’ve I told you two about that? The “affirmative” thing sounds wrong, so it does. Even more so now we’re here!’
Bob stood up straight as Becks placed the bags in the hole and began kicking soil in to fill it up. The folds of his grey robe stretching over hard slabs of muscle. ‘We should adopt the vernacular language of 1194 from this point onwards.’
Becks nodded. ‘Affirmative.’ They both froze for a moment, both blinking, both busy retrieving data. Finally they stirred to life once more.
Liam shrugged. ‘Are you two all done?’
Bob nodded. ‘Ay, serrr. We now can speake bothe in Auld Anglishe.’
‘En outra,’ said Becks, finishing the plastic-bag burial and stamping down the dark soil with a wooden-clogged foot, ‘nous sommes en mesure de parler en francais Normand.’
‘Well.’ Liam grinned. ‘I am impressed!’ He nodded towards the thin smudged column coming from the stone chimney, and for the first time his nose detected the inviting odour of wood smoke. ‘Is that the way we need to go, then?’
Becks nodded. ‘Oui. C’est la destination. Continu tu doit, trois cents, cinquante-six pieds dans cette direction.’
‘Ay,’ added Bob. ‘Seeke ye, beyonde yon furlong we sholde find — ’
Liam raised his hands. ‘I can’t understand a thing you’re saying now.’
‘Three hundred and fifty-six feet in that direction,’ said Becks. ‘We should be entering the perimeter of the Kirklees Priory, according to boundary data of that time.’
‘Ahh.’ Liam scratched at his ribs, itching already from the coarse material. ‘Much better. Could I suggest … while it’s just us on our own, you speak normal?’
Bob and Becks looked at each other and exchanged a nod.
‘Shall we?’ He rubbed his cold hands together. ‘And maybe whoever’s over there can rustle us up a nice bacon sandwich or so.’
2001, New York
‘So what happens now?’ asked Adam.
Maddy pointed to the displacement machinery. ‘We get ready to open up the portal again in about half an hour … it should be fully recharged by then.’
He looked confused. ‘I thought you said we give them anhour before bringing them back?’
‘Time doesn’t run the same,’ said Sal. ‘That sort of confused me at first as well.’
‘For them an hour will pass,’ said Maddy, ‘but doesn’t mean we need to wait an hour. In about thirty minutes we’ll be charged up. I could send you back in time to some point and arrange to bring you back a whole week later. But the moment after I sent you, I could tap in the timestamp for one week later and open up the portal again. For you a week would’ve passed. For us here, just a few seconds. It’s not, like, symmetrical, if you see what I mean?’
He nodded. ‘I get it.’
She turned to the desk mic. ‘Bob, can you set the data for the first return window?’
› Affirmative, Maddy.
She turned back to Adam. ‘Knowing them, they’ll probably miss the first window anyway.’ She huffed a laugh. ‘I don’t know why I bother.’
Adam looked at the desk cluttered with soda cans, pizza boxes and scraps of paper. ‘It’s almost as messy as my apartment.’