Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [39]
Several of the other students, not all of them girls, began to whimper at the prospect; the rest began to talk at once. Liam watched Whitmore struggling with the situation himself, shaking his head incredulously and balling his fists in silence. Kelly meanwhile was gazing up at the blue sky and the slightly odd-coloured sun as if hoping to find an answer up there.
Somebody needs to take charge, thought Liam. Or they’re all going to die.
He was damned if he was going to volunteer, though – to be responsible for this lot. He and Becks were probably going to fare much better on their own. One of the three men was going to have to step up and take care of these kids. But, as it happened, as Liam was beginning to wonder how the pair of them were going to discreetly extract themselves – with Edward Chan in their possession – the decision was made for him.
‘You!’ said Whitmore, his lost expression wiped away, all of a sudden remembering there was an issue as yet unresolved. His voice cut across the clamour of all the others’. ‘Yes, you! The goth girl,’ he said, pointing at Becks. He looked at Liam. ‘And you. You know what happened, don’t you? The pair of you weren’t in my party. And you knew that explosion was going to happen. So you’d better start telling us who the heck you are!’
There was an instant silence as all eyes swivelled to him and Becks.
Liam grinned self-consciously. ‘Uh, we … that’s to say me and Becks here, we’re not er … students as such. We’re sort of agents from another time.’
Fourteen pairs of eyes on him and none of them seemed to have anything close to a grasp on what he’d just said.
‘See, we’re time travellers and we came along today to try to protect him,’ he said, pointing at Edward Chan who was sitting on the grass, arms wrapped round his huddled knees.
Edward Chan’s eyes widened. ‘Uh? Am I in trouble?’
‘You, Edward. We came to find out how we were going to protect you from an attempt on your life.’
The others looked at the small Chinese boy then back at Liam.
‘You better explain about him, Becks,’ said Liam. ‘You’ve got all the facts in your head.’
Becks nodded. ‘Listen carefully,’ she began. ‘Time travel will become a viable technology in the year 2044 when a Professor Roald Waldstein will build the world’s first time machine and successfully transport himself into the past and return safely to his time. The practical technology developed by Waldstein in 2044 is largely based on the theories developed and published in Scientific American by the Department of Physics, University of Texas in 2031. The article is entitled “Zero-point Energy: energy from space-time vacuum, or inter-dimensional leakage?”.’
Kelly’s tired face lit up. ‘You gotta be kidding?’
Whitmore looked at the bewildered young boy hugging his own knees on the ground in front of him. ‘So how does this affect this boy?’
Becks’s cool grey eyes panned smoothly across to Chan. ‘The article published in Scientific American is a reproduction of a maths thesis presented by one Edward Aaron Chan. An act of academic plagiarism by his supervising professor.’
Edward looked up at her. ‘Me? Really?’
‘Correct. You will submit your dissertation to the Department of Physics for evaluation with an almost identical title in the summer of 2029, when you are twenty-six years of age. The department head, Professor Miles Jackson, will attempt to take credit for your work when it is approved for publication several months later, but he will be exposed as a plagiarist shortly after the article’s publication.’
‘But you said you’d come to protect him from an attempt on his life … why would someone want to kill Chan?’ asked Whitmore.
‘Edward Chan is the true originator of time travel,’ replied Becks. ‘In the future, 2051, time-travel technology becomes forbidden under international law because of the danger it poses to all mankind. This law is a result of years of campaigning by Roald Waldstein, the inventor of the first viable time machine, to prevent any further development of the technology.