The Doomsday Code

CHAPTER 53

1194, Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire

‘Stop!’

Liam heard the blade coming down, a long deep swoop that sounded like the wingbeat of Death itself and then the wooden stump his head was pressed against vibrated with the jarring impact. He heard the blade clang and hum and the executioner curse as the blow vibrated his hands.

Liam tried to focus on the wobbling metal blade right beside his nose, reflecting his own face back at him. And that was the very last thing he remembered before he fainted.

Water splashed across his face, and Liam came to screaming, ‘Nooooo!’

He opened his eyes to see he was in a dark place, his bonds now removed. It was a round room of wicker walls caked with mud. Above him, sunlight dappled through a crude thatch of twigs and reeds, and beams caught dust motes and pollen gracefully floating through them.

‘In case you’re wondering,’ said a voice calmly. ‘You’re not dead.’

Liam looked around the room, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. The first thing he saw was the hooded figure squatting on the mud floor of the room. Beside it, sitting on a wooden stool, was the tall man with the long sandy hair, studying Liam intently and stroking his bottom lip thoughtfully.

‘Who sent you?’ he asked after a while.

Liam struggled to gather his senses. A moment ago, seconds ago, he’d been awaiting the downward strike of a sword on the back of his neck.

‘You said “I’m from the future”,’ the man said. ‘The only person in the twelfth century likely to comprehend the notion of time travel is someone who, indeed, has come from the future. Therefore, I completely believe you. Now,’ he went on, sitting forward, ‘who sent you?’

Liam looked up at him. ‘You — you … you’re a traveller too?’

The man nodded.

‘Are you … are you one of us?’ asked Liam.

‘Us?’

‘The — the agency?’

He cocked his head. ‘Agency?’

Liam bit his lip. Perhaps he’d just blurted out too much.

‘Agency …? Hold on.’ The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re not talking about …?’ He smiled, then laughed. ‘You can’t possibly mean … The Agency?’

Liam shrugged. ‘Yes … I … no, I don’t know. I — ’

‘There were rumours … back in the 2060s. A secret agency set up to track down and terminate illegal time travellers. They were just rumours, mind.’

Liam said nothing, but the man seemed wholly intrigued by him. ‘Of course, everyone suspected that was propaganda — a deterrent, something to scare off any tech companies thinking about secretly developing a machine. But you’re here …’ His eyes narrowed. ‘So … is that it? Is this agency actually for real? Is that where you’ve come from?’

Liam’s eyes darted towards the hooded figure. Menacingly large in such a small hut, it sat silently poised in a squatting position. So far the man was asking questions … not demanding. He wondered how long that was going to last.

‘It’s true,’ whispered Liam. ‘I’m with that agency.’

‘My God!’ The man laughed again. ‘It was real! I knew it! Tell me … who’s behind it? The North American Federation? Is it the Sino-Korean Bloc? New Europe?’

‘I don’t really know,’ Liam replied.

‘Or is it a corporation?’

Liam shook his head. ‘I don’t know … we just work on our own. I don’t know who organizes us.’

‘You’re just a grunt, then?’ He smiled, not unkindly. ‘A foot soldier.’

Liam shrugged. ‘I … I suppose.’

‘And I presume you’ve come back here because I’ve altered history somehow?’

‘Yes.’

‘A lot?’

‘Enough that there’s been a time wave. The present has been changed.’

‘And your mission was to come back here to kill me?’

Liam closed his mouth. There was much too much he’d be giving away with an answer. Instead, he asked a question. ‘Who are you?’

‘That’s rather direct of you. I like that.’ The man smiled. ‘So I suppose I shall tell you. My name is James Locke.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Locke,’ said Liam, gingerly offering a hand. ‘I’m Liam O’Connor.’

A grin slowly spread across Locke’s face. He reached out and shook the proffered hand. ‘I recognize that accent,’ he said. ‘You’re Irish.’

‘Yes.’

‘A pity, eh?’

Liam frowned. ‘Pity? Why?’

‘Why?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t know … do you?’

‘Know what?’

‘Much of Ireland’s gone now. I think some peaks remain still in County Kerry, but the rest is all underwater.’

Liam stared at the man, wondering if he was playing a joke with him.

‘A lot of other places have gone too, mind. But you really don’t know about any of this, do you? What year exactly have you come from?’

He wondered if there was any point in keeping that from Locke. ‘2001.’

‘2001? Really? Why so far back? That’s over forty years before the first-ever test machine was functional.’

‘As good a place as any other, I suppose.’ He looked at Locke. ‘Did you just say Ireland’s underwater?’

‘Systemic climatic failure. It used to be called “global warming”. The ice caps melted decades ago; the sea ended up rising by about a hundred metres. We’ve lost about a fifth of the world’s land mass — the most densely populated fifth. What’s left is crammed full of people. Standing room only, I’m afraid.’

‘Jay-zus!’

‘Oh, you got that right,’ Locke said, pushing wisps of hair out of his eyes. Liam looked at his lean face more closely and realized he was a lot older than he’d first guessed. Forty, maybe fifty. His long hair threaded with greys and silvers, and criss-crossing lines splayed out from the corners of his eyes.

‘In my time the world’s dying, Liam. And it’s all our doing. It’s overheating and every ecosystem is gradually failing.’

Liam rubbed his head, still thudding with a dull ache. ‘So, when have you come from?’

He laughed a little sadly. ‘The end of times … I suppose.’

‘The end? But when?’

Locke said nothing. Outside the hut, there was a growing clamour of voices.

‘What do you mean by the end, Mr Locke?’

Locke waved the question away. ‘Maybe I’ll explain later. For now, though, I better tell that crowd of barbarians outside that there’ll be no Norman nobles beheaded today.’

‘You’re not going to kill me?’

‘Depends if you get in the way or not.’ He splayed his hands. ‘My advice? Don’t get in the way.’

‘Why? What’re you up to? Why did you come back here?’

He smiled again. ‘I came back to find out about something. Originally. But my plans have changed somewhat.’ He got up off his stool. ‘Be a good man and stay here … and don’t try and run or I’ll set Rex on you.’

The hooded figure stirred at mention of the name.

‘Is that a — a support unit?’

Locke clearly didn’t know what he meant by that.

‘A … clone,’ Liam added, unsure whether Locke was familiar with that term either.

‘A gen-engineered product? Good God, no. They’re far too expensive and far too unreliable. No, this is something altogether more practical. Do you want to see?’ Locke asked with a glint in his eye.

‘Errr … all right.’

He reached over and with a theatrical flourish he tugged the hood down to reveal a dented and rusted metal skull. Metal, that is, down to where the bridge of the nose would be on a human skull. From that point downwards, a synthetic skin cover descended, starting as a scorched and partially melted, jagged edge and becoming a waxy plastic-looking version of a nose, mouth, cheeks and jaw — an almost convincing facsimile of the lower half of a human face.

‘The people that sent me back … well,’ he sighed, ‘in the year I come from, we were lucky to get our hands on this model.’ He rapped the metal skull on the top, and the robot stirred with a soft whir of servo-motors. ‘Army surplus combat cyborg. Insurgency model with a synthetic plastene skin sheath … or at least what’s left of it. Used in the last Oil War. He’s not a particularly pretty boy but he’s as tough as a tank.’

‘Those people outside? They follow him … they seem to — ?’

‘Worship him?’ Locke shrugged. ‘Yes … “worship”. I think that about sums them up. The simple fools think of Rex as some sort of a God-sent instrument of justice sent down to lead them in a war against their Norman overlords. They’ll do anything he tells them.’

‘You mean, anything you tell them?’

He laughed. ‘Indeed. Rex is programmed to take my verbal commands only. They think “The Hood” is leading them. And that works just fine for my purposes.’

‘And what’s that, Mr Locke?’

He tapped his nose. ‘We’ll talk later.’ He got up from his stool and stooped down to exit the small hut. Liam could hear the crowd outside and Locke’s voice explaining something about the ‘sheriff being a useful hostage’.

Liam turned to look at the robot’s face. Half human, half rusting metal dappled with peeling army-green paint. And two small and faint pin-points of blue light: LEDs that glowed dully, just like the power-up indicator on the displacement machine back home in 2001.

Liam nodded gingerly and waved. ‘Uh … so, errr … hello.’

It continued to stare at him, motionless and silent.