Alex Scarrow - The Doomsday Code
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- Название:The Doomsday Code
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Becks nodded. ‘Do you wish to tell me what the message was?’
‘You promise me this is all secret?’
She nodded. ‘It is password protected. When you have finished discussing the matter with me and speak the code-word sequence, my normal AI will only be aware that a duration of time has passed without sensory data being collected.’
‘Right. OK. Well, this was what the note said: Maddy, look out for “Pandora”, we’re running out of time. Be safe and tell no one. ’
Becks nodded and looked at her. ‘This is why you instructed Liam not to come along on this mission?’
‘That’s right. And … obviously, when I saw the phrase this Adam guy decoded and posted publicly, it contained the word Pandora .’ She bit her lip for a moment. ‘My God, Becks … I can only think it’s someone trying to contact me through this Voynich thing?’
‘The Voynich Manuscript is approximately nine hundred years old.’
‘I know! I know! That’s what’s so creepy! Somebody nearly a thousand years ago wants to talk to me! Why?’
‘I have no data to answer that.’
‘And what was that weird stuff Adam said he had to tell me?’
‘ Seek Cabot at Kirklees in 1194 .’
‘What’s a Cabot? Or who?’
‘I have no data at this time.’
‘We have to go back there, Becks. If “1194” is a year! We’ve got to go back to that time and find out what Pandora means, what it refers to. And why it’s me — me , of all people, who needs to know.’
‘That would seem the logical next step.’ Becks raised a hand. ‘I am detecting tachyon particles.’
Maddy looked at her watch. They’d run out of time to talk this through; the portal was moments away from arriving. ‘Becks, can we talk about this again?’
‘Affirmative. You should close the partition with the code-word sequence now. When you wish to resume this conversation, repeat the sequence to open my drive.’
‘OK. Here it is, then: iPad — Caveman — Breakfast.’
Becks blinked rapidly several times, then her head cocked on one side, curious. ‘I appear to have two minutes thirty-two seconds of unlogged time.’ She turned to Maddy. ‘Did I malfunction in any way?’
The air in front of them pulsed, stirring plastic bags and newspapers into chasing each other in the dark. Ahead she could see the shimmering forms of their colleagues: Sal waving, Liam doing bunny ears behind her head.
‘No, you’ve been just fine, Becks. Perfectly fine. Let’s go home, shall we?’
CHAPTER 13
1994, Norwich
Adam’s hand throbbed. The tall girl with the surprisingly strong grip hadn’t in fact broken his finger, just stretched the tendons in his hand. Not broken, but still incredibly painful. Under normal circumstances it would have been painful enough for him to take himself to the campus walk-in surgery for a splint or icepack and some serious painkillers, but he was distracted enough that the throbbing in his finger was, for the moment, ignorable.
It can’t be . That’s what his mind was muttering to itself. It just can’t be .
‘ What we’ve got to do is get back home to 2001. ’ That’s what the girl with the glasses had said while he’d stood in the bathroom, holding his breath and listening to them. ‘ Then I’ll send a warning message into the future, to 2056. ’
He’d nearly laughed out loud at that. If he had, it would have been the shrill humourless laugh of someone losing their mind. Because this — the stuff they were saying — it was plain crazy, right? Because … because 2001 was seven years from now. 2001 was the future.
Mission Control to Adam , his mind chastised him, are you about to tell yourself that they’re time travellers? Is that it? Have you really gone that insane?
He nodded and chuckled to himself. ‘Yes … that’s it. Maybe I’ve gone completely mad.’ He was halfway to accepting that was what was wrong with him. His two visitors, his throbbing finger, all of it, were just elements of a paranoid delusion. After all, he’d been hiding out in this room for nearly a week, living like a hermit. Beginning to see things.
He decided that the sensible little voice in his head was most probably right, that this was a sign it was time to go see a campus councillor. And maybe, just maybe, he or she could explain to him in a perfectly rational way how come he’d found a message, written in modern English, in a document nearly a thousand years old; how come he was imagining visitations from time-travel girls from the future.
He laughed at how crazy it all sounded.
He was just about ready to admit he’d gone completely insane and help when he noticed a twist of paper on his bed where the girl — Maddy, that’s the name; that’s what your hallucinated visitor called herself, wasn’t it? — had placed her jacket. He reached over tentatively to pick it up, hoping it was just one more example of his mind playing tricks on him and it would vanish in a puff of delusion before he even managed to touch it.
Only it didn’t.
‘Errr … Adam to Mission Control … it’s, uhh … it’s …’ he muttered, turning the twist of coloured paper over in his hand. ‘This is real? Right? I’m not hallucinating this , am I?’
Mission Control had nothing useful to add at this point in time.
He looked closely at the paper in his hand. It was a ticket stub. An entry ticket to what appeared to be a nightclub or a bar or something. The address was West 51st Street, New York. What’s more, it had a date and an admission time stamped faintly like ticker-tape along the bottom.
20:21 — 09-09-2001.
All of a sudden he felt light-headed: dizzy and queasy, excited and terrified all at the same time. He looked again at the faintly printed time and date: 9 September 2001, seven years from now, the girl who’d just left his room was going to go to this New York nightclub.
It was one thing too many for him. He lost balance and flopped face forward on to his mattress.
Outside he heard the clump of boots on the stairs and a moment later a heavy fist on his door. ‘Hey, Adam! Who were those girls?’ Lance’s voice sounded far away; it sounded utterly inconsequential.
‘Suit yourself … you stay in there, you little freak. But tell your weird freak friends not to come round so late next time, right?’
Adam heard none of that. He was already busy mapping out the next seven years of his life.
CHAPTER 14
2001, New York
‘All right, stand clear, everyone!’
Sal crouched down and thumbed an icon on the growth tube’s small glowing touchscreen. A motor softly whirred at the bottom of the perspex tube and it slowly tilted backwards to a forty-five degree angle. A moment later the bottom of the tube opened and a flood-tide of foul-smelling gunk splashed out on to the floor of the back room.
Bob’s glistening, baby-smooth body slipped out of the tube and across the floor like a freshly landed blue marlin on the foredeck of a fishing boat.
‘It’s a boy!’ announced Liam.
‘This time round,’ added Maddy.
The newly birthed clone stirred on the floor, grey eyes opening and gazing up at them. They crouched around him, cooing like proud parents. ‘Liam,’ said Liam, pointing to himself. ‘My name’s Liam.’
The clone opened his mouth and vomited a river of pink gunk down the front of his muscular chest.
‘Oh, that’s our Bob all right,’ said Sal.
‘Negative.’ Becks squatted down to inspect the slimy naked body on the floor. ‘The AI designated “Bob” has yet to be uploaded.’
‘She’s right,’ said Maddy. ‘It’s not our old buddy yet. Just a meat combat unit.’
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