Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [54]
Liam noticed one or two heads turning towards the young boy, giving him a long, silent stare that looked like careful deliberation. Liam could see where this conversation might go.
‘There can only be one correct history, one correct timeline. And, whether we like it or not, that timeline includes an Edward Chan who becomes a maths genius, and a Mr Waldstein who makes that first machine, so he does. That’s how it goes. That’s how it has to go.’ Liam stared at them all, each in turn. ‘And that’s why you can trust me … why you can trust Becks, to be sure. Our primary goal now is to make sure that this young lad gets back home to 2015 to do what he has to do. And that means the rest of you too.’
‘So, if there’s, like, a primary goal … then there’s a secondary goal,’ said a dark-skinned girl with long black hair and a pierced upper lip that glinted with several metal studs. It was the first time he’d heard her speak today. Quiet, pensive, she reminded him a little of Sal. She was still wearing her name tag: JASMINE.
‘There’s no other goal, Jasmine, I promise,’ said Liam. ‘Me and Becks want to get you all back home, so we do.’
But that’s not strictly true, is it, Liam?
He and Becks had spoken in private earlier. He’d managed to reason with her calmly – to talk her down from proceeding any further with her self-decided mission objective to kill them all, then herself. But it was a compromise. A perfectly logical compromise that successfully reconciled the conflicting protocols in her head.
‘In six months’ time,’ he’d agreed with her, ‘if they haven’t rescued us by then, before your six months is up and you have to self-terminate … then, yes, you’re right … I suppose we’d all have to die. I’ll even help you.’ He’d smiled at her. ‘Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that, eh?’
The campfire crackled noisily.
‘So, there you go, all friends now, right?’ said Jonah. ‘Even robo-girl.’ He grinned. ‘Now about a nice sing-song. A round of “Kumbayah”?’ he added sarcastically. ‘I’ll take the lead. Kumbayah, my Lord! … Kumba–’
Someone threw a chip of dried dino dung across the fire at him.
CHAPTER 30
Wednesday, 2001, New York
A Wednesday. Maddy realized she hadn’t seen one of those in quite a while. Since she’d been on a plane trip back home to her folks in Boston, in fact. Since she’d become a TimeRider.
She looked down the flagpole approach to the Statue of Liberty’s star-shaped podium and spotted only half a dozen other people. She’d been here once before, on the same school trip that they’d visited the Museum of Natural History. It had been a tedious day full of queuing. Queuing to get ferry tickets, queuing to get on a ferry over to Liberty Island, queuing to get inside the podium building beneath Liberty’s feet and look at the small museum’s exhibits. Queuing once again to get a look up inside the statue itself. A pretty dull day of standing around, being shoved, bumped and barged into, waiting to look at things she actually had precious little interest in.
Today though there were no queues.
The island was all but deserted. Half a dozen ferries had arrived throughout the day, each offloading no more than a handful of muted whispering visitors. And, even then, their eyes had been more on the column of smoke coming from across the bay, coming from Manhattan, than they had been on the giant copper-green statue in front of them.
Maddy took another slurp of the cooling polystyrene cup of coffee in her hands. Horrible. She’d lost count of how many she’d bought from the stall opposite the embarkation pier. She was almost on first-name terms with the bewildered-looking man behind the counter who’d served her every time. He certainly should know by now she took it white with three sugars.
Come on, Foster … where the hell are you?
Through the morning she’d been hopeful as each ferry had arrived. But not now; it was nearly four in the afternoon. Another hour or so and the Statue of Liberty’s little museum would be closing, the last ferry back across the harbour getting ready to leave.
She was beginning