The Doomsday Code

CHAPTER 88

2001, New York

Monday (time cycle 59)

I know Maddy wanted that Adam to stay. I think she really liked, maybe fancied, him or something. He could have stayed, though. We could have fitted him in somehow. At least he’s got his life back now. Lucky him. I wonder what he’s doing now. Where he is. Probably back in England.

Anyway. Bob’s busy growing an arm and Liam’s shaved his head short. I don’t like it. He looks more like a coconut than Bob does! Oh, and the beard’s gone. Liam used an electric shaver for the first time in his life. Said the thing scared him half to death. He thought it was going to eat his face off. I’m glad he’s lost the beard. It made him look so much older, that and his bit of white hair. He was looking like an oldie.

At least now he looks more like himself.

But, jahulla, he is definitely older. He doesn’t look like the boy I saw when I first woke up. He’s changed somehow. The eyes maybe. Old before they should be.

Sal put down the pen and took in the quiet archway. On Liam’s bunk was a small stack of history books that he was working his way through. The one on top looked like it had something to do with the American Civil War; the cover was all flags and crossed swords and bearded generals. Right now he was downtown. Said he wanted to take a walk and clear his head. Sal got the distinct feeling he wasn’t so happy to be back as he’d let on. That maybe he could have been quite happy living on in the year 1194.

‘I was actually the Sheriff of Nottingham for a while,’ he’d told her rather proudly, and, she suspected, a little wistfully. Sal knew something was also troubling him. She’d heard him murmuring in his sleep last night … telling someone over and over that he was ‘so very sorry’.

His eyes. Old before they should be.

Eyes. That word suddenly stirred a memory.

I saw something a couple of days ago. It’s a bear, a child’s teddy bear. I can’t explain why it’s playing on my mind. I know I’ve seen that bear before. I mean ‘before’, like before me being a TimeRider. I just can’t quite remember where or when. It’s totally dullah. Weirding me out!

Through the open door into the back room she could see Bob’s form floating in the nutrient-rich amber soup, gently kicking in his sleep as something close to a dream must have been running through his head. His lower arm had grown bone first and now was at the stage of sprouting ribbons of feathery pink muscle tissue.

It was quiet in the archway.

Becks and Maddy, they were out together to give Foster an update. Sal wanted to go along and say, ‘Hi’. But Maddy had said, ‘Not this time’.

She’s always doing that. Treating me like a child.

She sighed irritably.

‘Just me,’ she said aloud, her voice echoing around the brick walls and coming back to her. She got down off her bunk bed with a squeak of springs and sauntered over to the computer desk and sat down.

‘Bob?’

› Hello, Sal.

‘Wanna play a game of something?’

› Certainly. What would you like to play?

‘Do you have any Pikodu puzzles on your system?’

› Affirmative. Would you like to do a two-player one?

‘Yes.’

One of the monitors flickered to life with a complicated mosaic of icons.

‘And put some music on. Something really heavy.’

› What would you like?

She clucked her tongue. ‘What about that band Maddy took us to see? What were they called again?’

› EssZed.

‘Yeah, let’s have some of their stuff.’

The faint rumble of a train passing overhead was lost behind the opening powerchord of a distorted guitar and the rasping deep drawl of the vocals. She sat back in her chair and nodded along to the beat. ‘Go on, then,’ she said, nodding at the webcam. ‘Your go first.’