Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [75]
‘Negative,’ she replied, pointing at the horizon ahead of them. ‘This is a large bay. Observe the horizon.’
Liam looked again, squinting. Then he saw it: a pale line of low humps on the horizon that he’d earlier assumed were clouds. Following the uneven grey-blue line to the left he could see it becoming more distinct as it drew closer. The broad beach they were looking along seemed to promise that it was angling gradually towards the distant spur of land and, if they were patient enough with it, it would link up with the spur eventually.
‘Recommendation: we follow the beach around to the landmass ahead.’
Liam nodded at the low hump of land. ‘Is that the place we need to be?’
She nodded. ‘Information: the distance of the landmass is nine point seven six miles.’
Whitmore nodded. ‘Then that spur has to be it, right? That’s what will one day be the fossil bed.’
Becks nodded slowly. ‘Information: a ninety-three per cent probability you are correct.’
‘My God,’ he said, scratching his beard. ‘Who knows? Some of the footprints we’ll see along the beach over there might just end up being some of the fossils we’ve seen in museums in our time?’ His eyes widened and he shook his head incredulously. ‘Isn’t that the craziest idea?’ He slapped Liam on the shoulder. ‘Time travel must drive you insane if you think about it too much.’
Liam cocked an eyebrow. ‘Oh, I’ve had my share of headaches thinking on it, so I have.’
They stepped forward, down through the boulders and on to the coarse shingle. ‘This is good,’ said Becks to Liam, pointing at the beach. ‘We are not leaving tracks.’
He looked down. She was right. The beach wasn’t sand, it was a coarse gravel that clacked and shifted wetly underfoot, but left nothing as clear as a print behind them.
‘Oh, good.’ He nodded. ‘So there you go – something to put a smile on your face, then?’
She gave that some thought. ‘This is minimizing our overall contamination liability.’ Her gaze shifted from their feet back up to him. ‘Correct. That makes me … happy.’
‘There you go, you miserable sod,’ he replied cheerfully. ‘Things are looking up. We’ll be home soon enough.’
They clattered down through the wet shingle until the first warm waves of tropical water hissed up to and around their feet. Up ahead the others had decided to wade knee-deep into the sea and were splashing each other noisily. She pursed her lips in thought as she watched them, a curious gesture she must have picked up from one of the girls, Liam decided. A gesture that Bob’s muscular face would have struggled to reproduce. ‘If we successfully complete the mission, Liam O’Connor, and we return to the field office, do you intend to retire me?’
‘Retire? What do you mean?’
‘Terminate this body and replace it with a male support unit? I heard Sal Vikram refer to this organic frame as a “mistake”.’
He’d not given it much thought. Becks was Sal’s error – she’d not bothered to check the gender marker on the containment tube – and they’d not had time to consider growing another. But certainly neither Maddy nor Sal had mentioned terminating her and disposing of her body.
‘Why would we want to go and do that, Becks?’
‘The male support frame is eighty-seven per cent more effective than the female frame as a combat unit.’
‘All right, maybe that’s true, but why’d the agency give us female babies as well, then?’
‘Female support frames can be useful for covert operations where a female cover is required.’
He scratched his head. ‘Well now, I really don’t see why we can’t have one of each of you, you know? A Bob and a Becks. There’re no agency rules, are there, you know, against us having two support units in a team?’
‘Negative. I am not aware of any agency rules on that.’
‘So, well, there you are … why not? We’ll have two of you instead of one.’
They walked in silence for a while, Liam intrigued by how human her question had sounded.
‘Have I functioned as efficiently as the Bob unit?’ she asked after a while.
‘Yes, of course. I don’t know what we’d have done without you so far. But you know it’s still