Alex Scarrow - The Doomsday Code

‘It’s OK,’ he replied. ‘Honestly, you don’t need to explain — ’

‘No.’ She decided to straighten her glasses. ‘I do need to explain. I … it’s just the work, the stress. That’s what it is: stress . And …’ She sighed, suddenly realizing that if she wasn’t careful, she was going to go all girlie and cry again. She took a breath. ‘I miss my old life … and it feels like we’ve all been in this weird time-travel agency for years, and … I know it’s only been, like, a few months.’ She laughed whimsically. ‘I guess for a bunch of mysterious time travellers from the future, we must come across as a bunch of losers.’

‘No.’ He shrugged. ‘I suppose even mysterious visitors from the future are still human, right? Still stub their toes? Still choke on their gum? Still slip on banana skins?’

She nodded, dabbing at her eyes. ‘Oh, we’ve done that enough freakin’ times already.’

He reached for a hand; she tried pulling back, but he grasped it and squeezed it gently. ‘So, it turns out that the history of mankind is in the hands of real people. Someone like you.’ He smiled warmly. ‘You know, I think I prefer that — instead of some team of superheroes who think they know it all.’

1194, woods, Nottinghamshire

The fire crackled hungrily on the pine cones and dried brittle branches they’d gathered by the waning light of the winter’s afternoon. A steady dusting of snow had slowed down their cart, and Cabot — sounding a lot more like a bad-tempered soldier than he did a pious monk — had finally had to concede they were going to have to make camp in the wilderness instead of seeking lodgings in the safety of some hamlet as they had done the night before.

Had they been travelling during a warmer month, he said, they’d be safer not having a fire and running the risk of attracting brigands like moths. But it was too cold not to.

Cabot spat on the flames as he finished a mouthful of stale bread. ‘We will be in Oxfordshire tomorrow. And the royal household at Beaumont before afternoon.’

‘Are you sure we’ll be seen by John?’

‘Aye. I’m sure. The poor fool is losing his hold on the country. He has done much that will enrage his brother, including his foolish orders to Richard’s Templars to take the Grail up north to Scotland ’stead of letting them store it in Beaumont.’

‘Why did he do that?’

‘I know not. Perhaps he had plans to hide it up there, to barter something out of his brother? So — ’ Cabot’s eyes locked on Liam — ‘if none of ye are of the Templar order, as I suspect, how is it ye know so much about the Grail?’

Liam smiled. ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’

Cabot spread his hands. ‘I am willing to listen.’

Liam looked at Becks and Bob, both standing a dozen yards apart at the edge of the light cast by the fire, silently standing guard. He wondered how much the monk should know; how much he could help them if he did know. And, of course, how much contamination to history that might cause downstream from them.

‘We’re … we’ve come from the future.’

Cabot’s grizzled face remained still, unimpressed by that. ‘ Future? ’

‘Quite a long time into the future, so it is. And, well … there’s an ancient manuscript that mentions this Pandora. We came here to learn more about it.’

‘ Future … Do ye mean this in the way I think ye mean it?’

‘Yes, future . As in days and years that haven’t yet happened, but will.’

Cabot’s eyes narrowed sceptically. ‘How is that? A man’s life can travel but in one direction. The sun rises then it sets. It cannot move the other way.’

‘It’s science,’ replied Liam. ‘I don’t get how any of it works. But it does.’

‘ Science ? What is this word?’

Liam shrugged. ‘Knowledge of how things work , I suppose. It’s quite big in my time. Science has given us all sorts of machines and understanding.’

The old man absently stroked the ridged scar down across his cheek. ‘Some Saracens I met did talk of such things. Of numbers and such, of things that can’t be held, weighed, bought or sold. Ideas … ideas our church would consider heresy.’ His face creased with a grin. ‘Would ye believe — many Saracen scholars say we live on a giant ball!’

Liam nodded.

‘Aye!’ Cabot’s loud cackle filled the quiet wood. ‘Would ye believe such foolishness? A ball !’

‘They’re right, though. The world is shaped like a ball.’

Cabot’s laugh choked, the smile wiped from his face in an instant. ‘A man could burn at the stake for saying such as that in the wrong company!’

‘But it’s true, Mr Cabot. The world is a ball, and there are other balls; we call them planets — millions of them up there in space. And they rotate around other suns in what are called solar systems.’

‘Our world … goes … about … the sun?’

‘Aye.’

‘Ye say there is more than one sun ?’

‘Aye. That’s what the stars are. Suns.’

Cabot looked up at the sky. He could see none tonight. His face seemed undecided between creasing with another good-natured cackle of laughter, or folding into a stern scowl of scorning disbelief. Finally, cautiously, he looked back down at Liam and shook his head.

‘Ye are a strange young man, Liam of Connor, with an odd way about ye and the way that ye talk.’ He smiled. ‘And ’tis a fanciful tale ye tell. Despite my better judgement warning me otherwise, ye are a young man I like. But I would strongly caution ye to keep such tales of coming from tomorrows-yet-to-be , and ball-shaped worlds and many suns, to yerself!’

Liam shrugged. Maybe Cabot was right. He’d read enough history books to know medieval Europe was a couple of centuries away from accepting ideas like these. To them the world was a flat plain, and the sun moved obediently across it from one side to the other simply because God willed it . And there were no other worlds, just this one. And no other suns. Trying to explain time travel to him, trying to explain how a history yet to happen already exists and — just to make things even more complicated — could even be rewritten , well, even Liam struggled with that sometimes.

‘Anyway — ’ Liam tossed a branch on the fire — ‘all that aside, we came back to learn a bit more about what the secret of Pandora … the Grail … is. But now we know it’s been stolen by someone, our mission has changed. Now, I suppose, we’ve got to get it back first.’

‘Aye.’ Cabot gazed at the fire. ‘There will be a terrible reckoning if ’tis not returned before — ’

‘SILENCE!’ barked Bob, waving an arm to quieten them both.

Cabot hushed and for a long minute they listened to the soft hiss of wind stirring branches and the far-off hoot of an owl, until finally Liam heard something, very quiet, but close by: the metallic jangle of a harness or a buckle.

‘Ye hear?’ whispered Cabot. ‘We are no longer alone.’

Then they all heard it — the almost musical note of a released drawstring, followed by the whistle of something arcing through the air. Liam heard the smack of impact and saw Bob recoil a step backwards. By the light of the fire he could see the glint of something metal protruding from between his shoulders. The support unit turned round to face Liam and he could now see a pale wooden shaft and the white fletching of an arrow embedded deep in his chest.

‘DANGER,’ his barrel-deep voice boomed and echoed into the forest.