Sal sighed. ‘I clean up — Maddy’s the untidy one.’
He sat down beside them and stared at the monitors. ‘So you’re patched into the Internet?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Maddy clicked with a mouse and minimized a couple of dialogue boxes on one of the monitors. ‘Access to pretty much every linked database in the world, I think.’
‘Good God,’ he said, pointing at one of the screens, ‘is that — is that what I think it is?’
‘The White House intranet? Yup.’
‘You’ve actually hacked into it?’
‘I’d like to say I managed to do that myself — ’ she chuckled — ‘but the field office has always had a line in since we joined.’ She clicked the mouse. ‘For a laugh I go rooting around in President Bush’s email inbox.’ She giggled. ‘He likes sending pictures of cats doing funny things to his buddies. Check it out.’
Adam sputtered laughter at an image of a sleeping kitten on a window-sill with a tiny Yankees baseball cap perched on its head.
‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ uttered Adam.
She smiled and clicked the mouse to close the president’s inbox; she knew there were emails buried in there that hinted about tomorrow’s events — events a person from the present shouldn’t know about. Not today, anyway. She needn’t have worried, though; Adam’s mind was swimming around elsewhere. He turned to look at the perspex tube and the rack of wires on the floor beside it.
‘So, Maddy, you said we can actually talk to them? While they’re in the past?’
‘Uh-huh. If we know where and when they are, it means we can aim a precise beam of tachyon particles at the point in space they would have been in eight-hundred-and-whatever years ago. The support units are — ’
‘The big ape and the tall girl who nearly broke my finger.’
She laughed. ‘Yes, them … They can both detect tachyon particles. They have embedded tech in their heads. They’re sort of clones with computers for brains.’
‘But they can’t send tachyon beams back to us,’ said Sal.
‘Why not?’
‘The energy it requires,’ said Maddy. ‘And they’d need a transmitter. Can’t fit all of that and a supercomputer in their heads.’
‘So how do they talk back to you?’
‘They can’t. We sort of operate blind on that front. We just have to hope they’re sticking to the plan.’
‘But they can talk to us,’ said Sal. ‘Kind of.’
Maddy winced a little. She really didn’t want Adam knowing too much about the way they did things.
‘Liam did it last time,’ continued Sal. ‘He left a message for us to find all the way back in the late Cret-’
‘Yes,’ Maddy cut in, stepping lightly on Sal’s toes to shut her up. No need for Adam to know just how far back in time their technology could take a person. ‘Yes. We’ve used what we call drop points before. A document or some kind of artefact that we know they can interact with in the past and that we know to closely observe in the present.’
Adam’s face creased thoughtfully for a moment. ‘So … that’s what you think the Voynich Manuscript is? Something somebody’s using to communicate with the future?’
She nodded. ‘Uh-huh. It might be. We just need to know.’
He shook his head silently. ‘I just … this is … I’m struggling here to take this all in.’
Maddy clacked her tongue. ‘It’s a lot. I was kind of the same at first.’
‘Me too,’ said Sal.
Adam grinned. ‘I knew — all this time I knew you were … for real. That I wasn’t mad. But this really is … absolutely — ’
‘Incredible?’
He giggled like an over-sugared toddler. ‘Yes. My God, that’s it. That’s the only word that does this any justice. Incredible.’
Sal sighed. ‘You get used to it after a while.’
CHAPTER 21
1194, Kirklees Priory, Yorkshire
They watched from either side of the path, mouths slung open in curious ‘o’s — a dozen monks who’d been tending lanes of withered grapevines as Liam, flanked by his two support units, strode up the dirt path towards the priory’s main entrance.
‘Morning!’ called out Liam self-consciously.
One of the monks dropped his basket and scrambled across the vegetable gardens towards a nearby barn, stammering Latin blessings to himself. The others shrank back, their eyes darting nervously across all three of them, but lingering unhappily on Becks.
Standing in the doorway was a young lad. Liam guessed he was a year younger than himself, watching them approach, fear making his eyes comically round.
‘Ye … c-c-canaught entre h-h-hier!’ the boy stammered.
Liam cocked his head then turned to Becks. ‘Did he just say we can’t enter here?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Well, it’s not so hard, then, this Old English.’ He turned back to the young man, wearing the white robe and black apron of a Cistercian monk. ‘Can … you … understand … me?’ he said slowly.
The boy swallowed, eyes darting left and right, and up at Bob’s expressionless big-boned face. Eventually his shaking head nodded. ‘A-aye …’
Liam relaxed a little. This is going to be easier than I thought.
‘We’re after someone called Cabot. He’s supposed to live here. Do you know him?’
The boy’s eyes narrowed.
‘This is Kirklees Priory, right? We got the right place, have we?’
‘Kirk-laigh,’ the boy uttered.
‘Yes, Kirklees Priory? This place?’
The boy nodded slowly. ‘Aye, Kirk-laigh.’
‘And Cabot? Is there a man called Cabot living here?’
The frowning again.
‘Information,’ uttered Becks quietly.
‘What?’
‘Your pronunciation of the name may be incorrect.’
‘Well then, how would you say it?’
‘Try Car-boh.’
The boy’s eyes widened at the sound of that. ‘S-seek ye … S-Sebastien Cabot?’
Liam shrugged. ‘Aye, that’s him.’
The boy pointed a wobbling finger towards a low, thatched stable on the far side of the gardens. ‘Yonder … B-Brother Sebastien tends to the h-horses.’
Liam handed the boy a broad smile. ‘Thanking you.’
They crossed the gardens, watching the silent monks edging back from them. In the stillness a cluster of loose chickens happily pecked and clucked brainlessly. Liam pulled open the barn door; it creaked deafeningly in the still grey morning. Inside it was dark save for faint dapples of weak light that had found a way through threadbare patches of thatch above. He could hear the hoarse rasp of animals breathing.
‘Is there a Say-bas-tee-en Cay-bow in here?’ He cringed at his own mangling of the pronunciation.
‘Aye!’ a voice called back. Grating and deep. ‘Who seekes him?’
‘Uhh … my name’s Liam.’
He heard the scrape and rustle of movement from somewhere among dark stalls and a moment later a robed figure emerged into the thin light of the open doorway.
Cabot wore the same Cistercian robe and apron, but looked unlike the other pale-faced monks still standing amid furrowed lanes of turned soil like forlorn ghosts. He stood an inch shorter than Liam, but a great deal broader; wide shoulders accustomed to bearing old muscle. A greying beard covered pockmarked and leathery skin, and battle-hardened muddy green eyes stared out beneath a thick brow broken by a livid pink scar that ran diagonally across the bridge of his nose and down across his right cheek.
‘Liam, is it?’ he growled softly.
‘Liam O’Connor. But you can call me Liam.’
‘Liam, ye say?’ he said again, rolling the name around his mouth. ‘Tis a name I’ve not heard before.’ Cabot glanced over his shoulder at Bob. ‘Ye have the look of a man-at-arms, sir?’
‘Nay,’ replied Bob. The rumble of his deep baritone stirred the horses in the darkness.
‘Mr Cabot, is there a place we can talk? Somewhere …’ Liam looked back over his shoulder at a dozen faces, still slack-jawed, still standing motionless with garden tools held in their hands, watching and listening curiously. ‘Somewhere private?’