Alex Scarrow - Gates of Rome

‘Not an asteroid,’ said the old Rashim. He giggled. ‘It is God! Punishing us with a pestilence! Yes!’

‘You mean a virus?’

The old man cocked his head. ‘A pestilence.’

Maddy sipped from the flask and passed it back to the young Rashim. ‘You need to know that your Project Exodus will cause a time wave that will completely rewrite history. You should know there’s no New York, there’s no America in 2001, thanks to you.’

‘It’s all jungle,’ said Sal. ‘Nothing.’

‘Christ! Time contamination is exactly what we want to achieve! The future’s a dead end for us! Don’t you see? There’s no way forward for mankind! Only backwards! The goal of Exodus is to export the executive branch of the United States back to Roman times. We’ve got weapons, we’ve got medicines, technology databases, experts in absolutely every field! Soldiers — ’

‘Well, whatever you intended Exodus to be… it ends up a disaster.’ She nodded at the old man beside her, once again lapsed into distracted muttering to himself. ‘That wreck of a human over there is the sole survivor of Project Exodus. That’s you, Dr Anwar! That how you want to end up?’

‘Then I’ll go back and suggest we reduce the translation mass. We can take less and that’ll reduce the potential error margin!’

‘You’re not going back,’ said Maddy.

‘What?’

‘I can’t let you go. Your people have to think your deployment technique failed. That your translation method is too unreliable to continue any further with.’

Rashim swallowed nervously. ‘Please… I have to get back.’

‘Sorry,’ she replied. ‘This is the way it goes.’ She looked across at Bob and Liam inspecting the display screen of one of the beacon rods and the lab unit looking anxious as if they intended to use the thing as a cricket bat. ‘We’re using your beacons to try and get back to our time. To 2001… and I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with us.’

Bob finished tapping in the data on the small touch-screen and a light flickered green from the top of the rod. ‘This should now be sending a thread-signal of particles that can be detected by our transmission array.’

‘You shouldn’t be interfering with that!’ complained the lab unit. ‘It’s not yours!’ SpongeBubba stuck out a petulant lip. ‘Very naughty!’

‘Do you think it will work?’ asked Liam.

Bob shrugged. ‘If the equipment in the archway is still functioning and undamaged and there is enough power remaining to deploy a time window, then there is no reason this should not work.’

‘My skippa will be very angry with you!’ chimed the lab unit.

Liam gave Bob a tired smile. ‘What would we do without you?’

Bob missed the affectionate rhetoric. ‘Grow another unit?’

AD 54, outside Rome

‘I… I am not going in there. I am not going with you!’

Maddy looked at the old man. She’d expected they’d have to get Bob to wrestle the young Rashim through the portal, but not the old one. ‘What? Why?’

He shook his head. ‘Want… want to die right here.’ He nodded slowly. ‘Here… this place. This hilltop. Open space…’ He closed his eyes, sniffed the air as the gentle breeze made the long grass before them and the leaves above them whisper together.

‘Shadd-yah! You don’t have to die,’ said Sal. ‘We can get you some help back home! Decent food. Get you looked at by some doctors or something! You’re going to be just fine!’

‘Already dead,’ he rasped. He looked at his younger self. ‘Don’t become this…’ he said, touching his own cheek with a claw of a finger. He smiled and closed his eyes. ‘I found you. These people must stop you… stop us.’

‘None of you understand, do you?’ said young Rashim. ‘The world’s pretty much finished in my time. We’ve poisoned everything. The world’s a garbage pit. What’s left that isn’t flooded is… is landfill. There’s no hope for us any more!’

‘Whatever mess we made of earth… we can’t toy around with time like this,’ said Maddy. ‘We’re all going back and leaving this history as it’s meant to be.’

‘No!’ The old Rashim’s eyes opened. ‘God… He’s in there.’ He nodded towards the strobing beacon that Bob was holding in his fist. ‘In that place… is chaos!’

Young Rashim shook his head with mild disgust at the rambling old man. ‘There’s no way that crazy old fool’s me.’

‘… if I he finds me… me and Mr Muzzy,’ he gabbled, ‘… if he finds us in there, we’ll be sent straight to Hell for what we did. Straight to Hell! Straight to Hell… ’

‘Why don’t we let him stay?’ said Liam.

Maddy turned round. ‘What?’

‘Let him stay.’ Liam looked at the old man with pity. ‘Look at him

… the poor man’s completely terrified.’

‘We can’t just leave him here! He’ll starve or — ’

‘He won’t survive, Maddy. He won’t make it through. Look at him.’

Maddy did. And she could see Liam was probably right. It looked like a strong gust of wind would kill him, let alone being bombarded with cell-rupturing tachyons. ‘All right, then.’ She squatted down beside the old man and put a hand on his arm. His wild rambling stopped.

‘Is this what you want, Rashim?’

He turned to look at her with milky madness in his wet eyes. She wondered if he was even seeing her.

‘Rashim? Can you hear me? Do you want to stay here?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll be on your own? We all have to go.’

He nodded, smiled. ‘Have Mr Muzzy with me.’

Maddy shook her head. It felt wrong leaving him out here. His mind was mush. She wasn’t even sure he knew where he was, even who he was any more.

Then there seemed to be some purpose in his eyes. He smiled. ‘You go. I want this…’

‘What? What is it you want?’

He spread his arms. ‘ This. Let me have this.’

She looked around at the flat hilltop. The soft hiss through the dry grass, the unbroken blue sky above. A horizon of distant lavender-tipped mountain peaks. And peace.

Peace and almost infinite space.

Maddy got it. She totally got it.

‘All right,’ she whispered softly to him. ‘All right…’ She smiled, squeezed his arm gently. ‘Savour it, Rashim. Savour every moment of it.’

He looked at her with a glimmer of sanity. ‘Thank you.’

She stood up and beckoned the others away, leaving the old man sitting hunched in the middle of the tall grass, his head cocked, listening to the gentle whisper of the wind.

‘Fill up that jug for him. Let’s at least leave him some water.’

‘He’s not coming?’ asked Sal.

‘Nope.’

2069, Project Exodus, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs

‘Still nothing?’

The technician shook his head solemnly.

Dr Yatsushita watched the proxy density display on the main holo-screen. It was flatlining. The density equivalent of white noise. Just an interdimensional soup. He took his glasses off and rubbed weary eyes. It was return-time plus over three hours. Even at one minute past due, the implication had been pretty clear. Just as there was no such thing as being ‘slightly pregnant’, there was no such thing as being nearly successful with time translation.

We lost them. Dr Anwar and that ridiculous customized lab unit of his.

He sat back down in his chair. The other technicians in their monitor-high cubicles sat up to get a look at the project leader, wondering how to read his body language. Their heads bobbed above partitions like a coterie of meerkats.

Yatsushita balled his fists. He’d just lost the brightest mind on his team and in a limited field like this… where do you go to recruit a replacement?