Infinity Cage (22 page)

She glanced at Rashim. ‘You’re thinking moisture might still wake this gunk up, aren’t you?’

He nodded.

‘Then I guess we’d better find out.’ She lifted her hand to her mouth.

‘Maddy! That is unwise!’ cautioned Becks.

Before anyone could stop her, she dabbed her tongue at a spot of glistening goo on the palm of her hand. Then instinctively made a
yuk
face. ‘Tastes yeasty … like Vegex spread.’

Rashim shook his head. ‘That was completely stupid.’

‘Well … some of it’s inside me now. We’re going to know what the deal is soon enough.’

The Kosong-ni virus was ‘dead’. Rashim speculated that a ‘rapid redundancy’ – a quick life cycle – must have been a critical part of its genetic design. As a bioweapon, and that’s what it most certainly was, it would have been engineered to spread and act rapidly, to completely annihilate any living organism it came into contact with, then after a short period of time some inbuilt chemical trigger must make the virus infect itself. The perfect doomsday weapon engineered by people who were prepared to lie low for a few weeks with food and water and be ready to emerge in the aftermath and reclaim a wholly ‘cleansed’ world.

‘Reckon only them crazy-ass North Koreans’d be insane enough to build a weapon as indiscriminate and stupid as that,’ said Heywood.

They exited the chalet, stepping out into a summer’s day that looked like the bleak middle of winter. They made straight for the abandoned garage opposite in the hope of finding something to drink in the garage’s convenience store. For once luck was on their side. A vending machine at the back had been hiding a dozen cans of soda out of view in its workings like an over-cautious museum curator. Seven pristine, undented, un-rusted cans of diet cola, three cans of an energy drink, six cans of grapeade and to Maddy’s delight a single can of Dr Pepper.

She belched after taking a long thirsty slug. ‘Sorry.’

‘Three cans each and two spare,’ said Heywood. ‘We better make these last.’

They set off into a world dusted white by the virus residue and resumed walking south-west along the broken gravel road that had led them here nearly a week ago. It climbed relentlessly uphill, a slow and steady gradient ascent from the foothills up into the Rockies. They passed a faded, paint-flecked roadside sign:

The term ‘forest’ seemed a particularly pitiful joke now. Douglas firs that should have been lush and thick with a coat of dark green needles and brown cones were now no more than grey skeletons: telephone poles surrounded by a haze of thin twigs.

The gravel crackled and crunched beneath their feet as they made their way silently up into the mountains, the white residue brittle and fine like the ice of an early-winter frost.

Mid-afternoon they took a break as the climbing road hairpinned back on itself. They stood on a lay-by that dropped steeply away beyond a rusting safety barrier. Once upon a time this had been a roadside picnic spot; a weathered picnic table and bench, the remains of a barbecue pit and a faded sign suggested this would be a great place to take that all-important
we-were-here
holiday snap of the Front Range of the Rockies.

Maddy lowered her backpack to the ground, wandered across the gravel to the edge of the picnic area, leaned against the safety rail and gazed out across the river valley below them. The landscape was like a black-and-white movie, a lifeless and barren
greyscale. The sloping valley side opposite them looked like it was feathered with first-of-the-season snow, as this side would to someone peering across from over there. It looked wintery. She shuddered; it was a few degrees cooler to be fair. The altitude, of course. They must be a few hundred feet higher than they’d been when they’d set out. Perhaps some of the white dusting she could see at the very tops of the receding peaks was year-round snow?

Rashim joined her, leaning against the creaking safety rail. ‘A contrast to the Amazon jungle, hmm?’

‘Now that was truly breathtaking.’ She smiled. There, she’d witnessed so much life crammed into one place. Millions of species of flora and fauna, all jostling with each other for elbow room. It had felt like they were swimming through a green soup alive with buzzing, chittering noises.

‘I wonder what that jungle looks like now.’

He sipped grape soda carefully from a can. ‘Like this probably. Grey, not green any more.’

‘Do you think K-N got everywhere?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe there are some islands or remote places that managed to escape it. I hope so.’ He sighed. ‘It would be nice to think there might be a lush green island somewhere out there in the middle of an ocean, an island stuffed full of animals carrying on their lives oblivious to all of this.’

‘Uh-huh. Wouldn’t it.’ She finished her second can, tipping the last few drops into her mouth. One more soda left in her backpack. When it ran out, God knows what she was going to drink. Same for the others. They were all sipping carefully.

He licked his lips. ‘If we had been just a few days earlier, we could have prevented this from happening.’

She nodded. ‘I wonder if this is a bit like the sort of rebirth you get after a forest fire.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I’m sure I read somewhere that natural forest fires are, like, a part of the life cycle of a forest. You get a mature forest and it kind of starts dying from within because only the oldest trees are the ones getting any sunlight. And they’re all so old they’re dying bit by bit anyway. Then along comes a lightning storm. There’s a fire; everything burns down to soot and charcoal, and it looks completely dead. But then all that ash is great for the soil. So, the first time it rains, the green sprouts back out of that pitch-black soil and the forest begins a brand-new life cycle, because now the old trees have gone the saplings have a chance … they can see the sun.’

He shrugged. ‘If there’s anything alive out there … possibly.’

‘Maybe Kosong-ni, Pandora … Waldstein’s Revenge … whatever we want to call this, maybe it’s something that just
had
to happen. A new start for the saplings, so to speak.’

He looked at her. ‘A rebirth?’

She nodded. ‘Don’t you ever wonder whether this is a cycle that has happened to humanity before? Like, I dunno, like maybe Noah’s ark, or Atlantis, was some Extinction Level Event that happened ages ago … and maybe a trace of that story somehow ended up becoming the DNA for some kooky Bible story?’

He pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘Not really.’

She laughed drily. ‘Yeah, maybe you’re right. I like that you don’t ever seem to overthink things.’ She smiled at him. ‘I’ve always liked that about you.’

‘I suppose I am not the philosophical type.’ He shrugged. ‘I think of philosophy as a soft “science” for those who cannot handle the definite answers of
real
science.’

‘Ouch.’ She smiled at him. ‘I didn’t think you were such a hard-core pencil-neck.’

‘Science is a thought process that can be proven or disproven. Whereas philosophy, religion, art …?’ He shrugged again, dismissively. ‘With those areas of thought, everyone’s opinion is considered valid. No one, therefore, is “wrong”. Which logically means no one is right. It’s circular thinking that gets no one anywhere.’

She looked out across the river valley. Looked south to where they needed to be. Waldstein was out there somewhere. Hopefully still alive and waiting for them.

‘How long are we going to last after we’ve finished our cans?’

‘There’s water down there,’ he said, nodding at the glinting thread of a river below them.

‘But is it safe to drink? What if there are
active
K-N microbes, or cells, or whatever, in the water?’

‘We’ve touched enough of the residue powder with our bare skin. If it was still … “alive”, we’d know by now.’

‘I guess at some point soon we’re going to have to refill our water bottles. And then we’ll know.’

They both stared out at the valley for a while, listening to nothing more than the whisper of a gentle breeze. Standing up here, they should have been hearing so much more: the twittering of birdsong, the sporadic, throaty cry of elk, the buzzing of insects.

‘You do know … we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble, Maddy?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We should have set the time-stamp for after K-N had happened, then opened a portal right beside Waldstein’s campus.’

She was about to shake her head and remind him that the
burst of tachyon particles would have exposed Waldstein to whoever was out there monitoring the world for illicit experiments in time travel, when she realized what he was getting at.

There’s no one left watching right now.

Probably. And if someone was still watching and waiting for rogue tachyon particles to appear … what would they do now if they spotted one? Would they even care? They’d almost certainly have far more important matters on their mind than watching for naughty tachyon particles.

She stared at him, silent for a long while. Then finally she closed her eyes. ‘I’m a complete frikkin’ idiot.’ Her head drooped down until her forehead softly thunked against the railing. ‘How many times have I screwed up now?’

He put an arm round her shoulders and looked back at Becks, standing guard by the picnic table. ‘No, you are not. It’s not like our walking computer over there figured that out either. Anyway … back in London we did not know where to begin looking for him. We had to come out here and identify the location first.’

‘I … should have planned it all better. If I’d done my job properly, been smarter, we’d have beaten the virus. We should’ve got to Waldstein before it caught up with us.’

‘We were working blind back in 1890. You had nothing to work from, Maddy. No information. No data. Nothing.’

She lifted her head and turned to look at him. ‘Or maybe I should have just listened to Liam and forgotten about this dumb idea of coming to find Waldstein?’

‘There would still be the Big Unknown Thing. Why is it there? Why is it transmitting a beam of particles down through the middle of the Earth? Who put it there?’

He emptied the last drops of the can into his mouth and
then tossed it over the rail. ‘Waldstein may know about them … he must know. Anyway –’ he squeezed her shoulder tenderly – ‘you finally got an invitation from your
creator
to come and see him. Who could possibly ignore that? To any mortal being, is that not like being summoned by God?’

She laughed. ‘See? You
can
do philosophy!’

He rolled his eyes and shook his head. ‘Don’t insult me.’

Liam chanced another quick look over his shoulder.

They’re still following us.

The young man from the tavern seemed to be eagerly leading the pursuit through the busy marketplace. Beside him was the man with the thick dark beard; both seemed to be talking animatedly to each other as they made every effort to keep up with them, but at the same time kept a respectful distance a dozen strides behind them. Both seemed excited: grinning as they talked, slapping their chests for emphasis, waving their hands.

Behind them, a tail of the curious was gradually growing: old, young, male and female. Dammit … the young man was even calling out to people they passed.

Bob’s internal compass was steering them northwards through the busy upper city. To their right, the walls of the temple and Fortress Antonia loomed ominously above the low rooftops. They were heading for the north entrance. If they reached it, it would take them through the market at the base of the steps leading up to the compound. Too close for comfort, and a fair probability that some of the tradesmen down there selling their overpriced sacrificial offerings, and the many pilgrims doing the buying, might have been among those who had witnessed things earlier this morning.

Liam was tempted to break into a run and try to lose their growing Pied Piper trail of followers. But running would get them noticed. Running would make people stop and look and try to see what they were fleeing from. As it was, Bob’s size was drawing enough attention – the people they brushed past doing a double take at his height and width.

Every now and then he caught comments uttered just behind their backs, people wondering if that was the same giant man the Romans had spent the day combing the streets for.

They weaved their way through an open area full of low-fenced paddocks containing goats and chickens. On the far side of it was the crenellated inner wall of Jerusalem, known as the wall of Hezekiah. Liam had the rough layout of the city in his head. This one ran west across the city from the corner of Fortress Antonia to the western entrance. Beyond was the suburb of Bezetha, the ‘new buildings’ of the city. And that northern part of Jerusalem was contained within the most recently built outer wall, the wall of Herod Antipas.

They made their way through the pens, Liam feeling horribly exposed with nothing higher than his waist around them. As they reached the shadows beneath the wall, he chanced another look back.

There they were: a growing, gabbling, excited crowd, picking their way through the low paddocks. Perhaps this knot of people was going to be spotted by one of the Roman sentries on the wall above. If they were lucky, a patrol would be quickly despatched from the fortress to intercept them and disperse them.

Dammit. Where’s a Roman when you need one?

They emerged into the afternoon sun on the far side of the wall. The buildings were newer, taller, the streets wider and cleaner. Clearly a more affluent part of the city. Aspiring to
Roman inclinations towards grid-like order. Liam wondered if their growing band of peasant followers might be halted at the wall by some neighbourhood guards. He could imagine the poorly dressed crowd behind them wouldn’t be encouraged to venture en masse to this side of the wall.

As they approached an intersection of busy thoroughfares, Liam finally heard a deep commanding voice belting something out in Latin from behind.

‘Stop!’

His first instinct was to sigh with relief. Somebody
was
stopping the rabble at the archway. Then there was more. ‘You two! Stay right where you are!’

He stopped and turned round to see a centurion at the head of a patrol of legionaries. Alone, he strode across the busy intersection towards them, chain mail jangling, one hand resting on the hilt of his gladius, the other casually swinging a small vine-stick. A dozen yards short of them he came to a halt.

He craned his neck forward and shaded his eyes with one hand. Then all of a sudden he reached for a bronze whistle on a tether round his neck and blew sharply.

The legionaries trotted over to join him.

‘You!’ He pointed his stick at Bob. Bob looked at Liam.

‘Me?’ asked Liam.

‘No,
you
! You big ox! Under orders from the prefect of Judaea, you’re under arrest!’

Liam was about to suggest to Bob they just turn and make a run for it, but a chorus of barracking voices diverted the centurion’s attention. He turned to see a crowd of people emerging through the archway beneath the wall. They spread out across the street. Liam hadn’t realized how many people had joined the band of followers they’d been trailing behind them. There had to be seventy, perhaps eighty, people.

‘You sewer rats! Get back through that gate!’ the centurion bellowed at them in gutter Latin.

He was answered with jeers and curses from across the busy thoroughfare. The crowd that had spilled into this more affluent suburb now fanned out and stood on the far side of the paved road, keeping a wary distance from the Roman patrol in case the centurion blew on his whistle again and ordered his men to charge at them. The mob’s defiance was cautious … wary … but balanced on a knife edge. Bob, meanwhile, lurched menacingly forward and growled at the legionaries.

Either these men had witnessed him this morning, or they’d heard about it from their battered colleagues. They backed up a step. And that was enough of an enticement for the Judaean peasants. They spilled forward, gathering round Liam and Bob.

‘Go back to your fortress, you Roman mongrels!’ shouted an old man beside Liam, shaking his walking staff at them.

The centurion issued an order to one of his men. The man put down his shield and javelin and began to run off in the direction of the fortress. The centurion then turned to the rest of his men and barked an order. They closed up together, presenting a solid wall of twenty shields.

‘This … 
man
is under arrest!’ he said, pointing his stick at Bob again.

A small lump of masonry arced over their heads, broke into pieces mid-air and clattered harmlessly down on to the helmets of some of the legionaries.

The centurion shook his head wearily. ‘Hold fast, men!’

The young man who’d been following them from the tavern pushed his way through the crowd and stood before Liam. ‘There will be more Romans. They will come from the fortress quickly!’

‘We are trying to leave the city,’ replied Liam. ‘We’re not here to cause any more trouble.’

More hunks of masonry and stone were being pulled from the street by the mob, and began to arc through the air, rattling down against the wall of shields.

‘But you did! This morning! You and –’ he glanced at Bob – ‘this man, together you showed the priests we are not the fools they think we are! We were not just stupid cows to be milked. The news of what you did is all over Jerusalem!’

‘That was …’ Liam was about to try to explain again that the man who had actually been the courageous one … the man who had
started
the riot was a man called
Jesus
. As if mention of that name should be enough to clarify the misunderstanding. But, of course, Liam was beginning to realize that at this moment in time Jesus of Nazareth was still an unknown figure. He was just one of many rabble-rousers and firebrands walking from town to town, harnessing the growing discontent bubbling away in Roman-occupied Judaea. All that the common people of Jerusalem knew of Jesus – before this morning – was that he was a particularly compelling speaker, that he was from Nazareth … and that the priests had been getting increasingly twitchy over rumours that this particular troublemaker’s meandering tour of small towns was going to conclude with a visit to the city.

‘Your words … your words reached us before you arrived! The people will follow –’

‘You don’t understand! They’re not
my
words!’

‘They are your father’s!’ The young man smiled. ‘I know! We know who you claim to be!’

The mob was beginning to spread out, to find its voice, to gain confidence. One or two passers-by, seeing a comfortingly small number of Romans being harangued and challenged for once, started to join in. Hurling abuse, hurling stones.

The centurion was looking over his shoulder anxiously,
clearly hoping that reinforcements were coming soon. The crowd was beginning to extend round the ends of the short shield wall, sporadic missiles now coming in from the sides. He barked another order and the shield-wall formation quickly closed up into a tight square.

The thickly bearded man from the tavern emerged from the noisy crowd. He grasped the young man’s arm. ‘There WILL be many more Romans! Linus, this giant can’t kill them all!’

The young man nodded. He looked at Liam. ‘You should leave here while there is still time!’ He pointed at the wide streets. ‘The Romans will block all of these. You will be trapped in the middle and then they will arrest you.’

‘We need to get out of the city!’ replied Liam.

‘All the entrances have been sealed today,’ said the bearded man. ‘They will not let anyone in or out!’

‘Come with me!’ said Linus. ‘I can hide you! Shelter you!’